OPI Color Paints Leadlight Mani

Today I have a nail stamping manicure created using the 'leadlight technique' to share with you. For this mani I used the new OPI Color Paints Collection that has recently been released for summer 2015:

It's been a while since I've done a manicure like this. I usually try to avoid doing full-hand leadlight manicures, since they tend to be very time-consuming. However, I was really excited to try out the entire line of OPI 'Color Paints', so I made an exception!

I first found out about the 'Color Paints' collection sometime in April, and learned that it was supposed to launch in early May. I was so eager to try these polishes, that I actually began hunting for them in different beauty supply stores near the end of April (just in case they were put out early!). I had no such luck. In fact, compared to other OPI collections, these polishes were relatively hard for me to get a hold of. A lot of the places that I usually go to buy OPI polishes don't seem to have them (...yet?). Perhaps that will change as we get a little further into the season.

Around the first or second week of May, I finally saw them on display in one of my favourite beauty supply stores. At the time, they only had a small display featuring only one each of the full sized colours, and 4 bottles of 'Silver Canvas'. Unfortunately, the one bottle of 'Magenta Muse' was sold out, so I could only purchase the other colours, and continue the hunt for the missing bottle. Funnily enough, that same colour was also sold out at the only other place I was able to find these at the time - and their display originally contained 3 of each colour! It took about another 2 weeks for me to finally be able to acquire that last polish - I ended up getting it when the first store I went to eventually got the larger '3 of each' display.

Polishes Used	Polishes Used (Cont’d)
OPI Color Paints ‘Pen and Pink’	Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Celeb City’
OPI Color Paints ‘Magenta Muse’	Konad Special Polish in Black
OPI Color Paints ‘Chromatic Orange’	OPI ‘In True Stefani Fashion’
OPI Color Paints ‘Primarily Yellow’
OPI Color Paints ‘Landscape Artist’
OPI Color Paints ‘Turquoise Aesthetic’	Plate Used
OPI Color Paints ‘Indigo Motif’	Messy Mansion Leadlight Lacquer Plate A06
OPI Color Paints ‘Purple Perspective’
OPI Color Paints ‘Silver Canvas’

As for my first impressions, I am quite pleased with the collection as a whole. The polishes worked really well for leadlighting, and that was the main use I had in mind when getting them. Also, I really like the 'foil wrapper' look that you get when you layer these translucent colours over a silver base. Normally I would use a white base for leadlighting, so this is a new idea for me, and I love it! My favourite colour in the collection is 'Turquoise Aesthetic' - it's a gorgeous shade, and it looks absolutely amazing layered over the silver base.

The only colour that I have a minor complaint about is 'Purple Perspective'. I find that it is almost a little too highly pigmented so you have to be really careful to not use too thick of a coat or else the purple doesn't 'glow' as much over the silver base, and reads almost as black. 'Indigo Motif' was the second trickiest one to work with due to the intensity of the pigment, but even with a slightly thick application, it still reads as blue, although it won't 'glow' as much.

And as for the manicure, I like how it turned out. It's colourful and fun, and again, it's something new for me because of the foil look that the silver base gives. The manicure is really busy, because the driving force behind my colour selection was to use all 9 colours from the collection, however, due to the success I had with this trial mani, I can't wait to start experimenting with these polishes using smaller colour palettes, and less intricate designs!