Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: Nicole by OPI 'Rich in Spirit'

Today's spotlight on my 'Project Polish' polishes, is on 'Rich in Spirit' from Nicole by OPI's Spring 2011 'Liquid Metals' 4-pc collection:

In the picture above, the colour looks a bit like a typical metallic silver polish, however, the polish is actually a gorgeous light steel-blue shimmery metallic foil. It is quite unique to my collection in that I don't have very many (if any) pastel metallic polishes. I have a blue metallic foil from the Sally Hansen 'Color Foils' collection, but the blue is more saturated.

Even though this was from a Spring collection, I can see this as a great winter colour as well, since it's so reminiscent of ice. I'm really looking forward to getting a chance to get a lot of use from it this winter and during the holidays!

Blue and White Splatter Manicure using Claire's 'Flashing Lights' and Sally Hansen 'Sky's the Limit'

Today I have a fun glitter manicure I did using one of my 'Project Polish' polishes, Claire's 'Flashing Lights':

Since this polish is a topper, I'll include my 'Spotlight' on the polish (where I give a little history, and some details about my 'Project Polish' polishes) in this post. Claire's 'Flashing Lights', is a blue splatter effect glitter with matte turquoise hex and bar glitters, and white hex glitters. From what I can see on-line, it looks like this polish was released in 2013. I used a sister polish from the collection, a black version called 'Splatter Paint' in a couple previous manicures that I blogged. The earliest is from August 2014 (and here is the other). I remember I bought a bunch of these splatter effect polishes from Claire's on clearance, so I probably bought them in late 2013 or early 2014 - it's really shocking how quickly time flies!

Polishes Used

Claire's Cosmetics Splatter 'Flashing Lights'

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure -                   'Sky's the Limit' (colour number 565)

For this manicure, I decided to go with a mostly monochromatic theme, so a chose a light blue Sally Hansen polish as the base, 'Sky's the Limit'. I'm pretty sure that this was previously untried, so I'm glad I got a chance to use it despite doing this project. That's one reason I'm really glad that there are topper's included in this 'Project Polish'... It's only been a few weeks, but I'm already starting to feel a little constrained. Once I realized that I needed to choose a base colour from my collection to go with this topper, I was so eager to look through my stash of polishes to find one to use! 

I'm probably going to have to take a small hiatus from the project a little closer to the holidays, because I'm really looking forward to doing some fun Christmas manicures using Reds and Greens, and I don't want to feel pressured to include some of the 'Project Polish' colours.  

Polishes Used

Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: Nicole by OPI 'Nicole... Spotted!'

The featured polish for today's 'Project Polish' spotlight is Nicole by OPI's 'Nicole... Spotted!', a teal jelly polish loaded with yellow, green, and blue metallic glitters, as well as what appear to be gold micro glitters. It was released in 2010 as part of the 4 piece 'Gossip Girl' collection, a cross-promotion with the television show 'Gossip Girl', which was quite popular at the time.

The silver and white glitter polish that I used in my Remembrance Day Mani - 2018, 'Scandal, Secrets & Sparkle', was also from the 'Gossip Girl' collection. That polish is also in the project, and since I previously did a swatch post about it, I went back and added the 'Spotlight' label to that post so that it will be included in this series. Here's a swatch of 'Nicole... Spotted!':

First of all, this polish has held up relatively well over the years. The consistency of the polish may possibly be a touch thicker than it was originally, but it still spreads really easily, and required 2 coats to opacity.

Secondly, I was quite impressed with how chip resistant, and long lasting this polish was on me! This polish was so durable that I wore it for a few days with virtually no signs of wear. However the flip side of that coin is that the polish was also quite tedious to remove. Even though there is a lot of glitter, I chose not to wear a peel-off base coat... I don't think that I'll make that same mistake again! Unless of course I'm planning for a situation where I might not be able to do my nails for a while, and need a super durable polish to get me through most of that time.  

I'll end today's post with a couple extra shots of the swatch:

Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: OPI 'Glow Up Already!'

For today's 'Spotlight' on one of the 16 polishes that I have included in my 'Project Polish', I have a swatch of OPI's 'Glow Up Already!' to share:

'Glow Up Already!' from OPI's Holiday 2010 'Burleque' Collection

This glitter polish is from the OPI 'Burlesque' collection from Holiday 2010. The 'Burlesque' collection was a cross-promotion with the Cher and Christina Aguilera movie of the same name. If I recall correctly, I remember glitter polishes being really big at the time, and a plethora of fun glitter polishes and glitter/glitter-heavy collections were being offered by several nail polish manufacturers. It was a fun time in the world of nail polish!

A lot of the legendary glitter polishes like OPI's 'Mad as a Hatter' and 'Absolutely Alice', China Glaze's 'Emerald Sparkle' and Deborah Lippmann's famous series of glitter polishes (eg, 'Glitter in the Air', 'Bad Romance' etc.) were all released around this period of a few years.

I remember being totally mesmerized by so many of all of the pretty glitter polishes that were coming out. I was completely on board the glitter band-wagon at the time, and I bought way more glitter polishes back then than I do now. However, as I mentioned in my last post, I've been using my glitters less and less these days. Typically, when I do use a glitter, I will just paint one nail with the polish as an accent nail. But even this is only occasionally, as a lot of the time I'll accent certain nails using other methods. Consequently, I'm not surprised that most of my project polish polishes are glitter polishes. 

I'm really looking forward to the challenge of finding new ways to incorporate glitters into my nail art. Perhaps I can adapt all of the methods I came up with for using my 'Crackle' polishes during my '2015 Crackle Polish Challenge'!

For now, I'll leave you with some additional shots of 'Glow Up Already'.

Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: Quo by Orly 'Night Sky'

Today I have a quick swatch of 'Night Sky', by Quo by Orly

From what I could determine from some internet searching, this polish was the 'Quo by Orly' version of an Orly polish called 'Out of this World', from the Orly Cosmic FX collection released in Fall 2010. I'm assuming that the Quo version would have been released around the same time. I know that I purchased it relatively early into my polish collecting journey, so I'm assuming that I bought it sometime in 2011 or possibly even 2012.

Unfortunately, my bottle of 'Night Sky' has not held up well over the years. As mentioned in an earlier post, about half the bottle had evaporated, and I tried to loosen the remaining polish up a bit with some lacquer thinner.  The polish was nice and loose after that, but when I actually tried to do a manicure with it, it was taking forever to dry! After about 45 minutes had passed and my nails were still not completely dry, I had to give up on the manicure. Now I'm really re-considering my goal to use up the entire bottle. 😞

I think I'll try again one more time with only one thin coat of the polish over one coat of black polish. Hopefully that works...

Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: China Glaze 'Liquid Crystal'

I've decided to include posts featuring each of the polishes included in my 'Project Polish'. Since I like to actually wear any swatches that I do, I will be doing this 'Spotlight' series over a period of time. Today, I wanted to start with the polish I used for my last 'Project Polish' Manicure, China Glaze 'Liquid Crystal'.

This polish is from the China Glaze Prismatic Chroma Glitters Collection from Spring 2012. There were 6 polishes in the collection, all with the same concept but in varying shades.

It really looks a lot more like a textured metallic polish with glitter, than a glitter polish - but that could be because my 6 year old bottle has started thickening. Either way, I like the look. I used a peel-off base coat, and some quick dry high-gloss top coat on the manicure above. I've also included some additional shots below.

Scandal Secrets & Sparkle by Nicole by OPI

Today, I have a swatch of a nail polish that I've had for a few years:

This is 'Scandal Secrets & Sparkle' from Nicole by OPI. This polish was part of their 2010 'Gossip Girl' Collection. I purchased it a couple years after it came out, on clearance for 2 dollars at a drug store. It's a silver glitter polish in a shimmery white translucent base.

I love the way that the white base softens the look of the glitter, and helps give the polish an overall etherial, fairy-dust sparkle look .

I've been sticking to a lot of simple, quick manicures lately due to time constraints, so this is the perfect type of polish for a nail art lover like me with very little time on her hands. There's shimmer and sparkle to make the look pop, but it's a neutral colour with a toned down base so it works with a lot of outfits, and is that perfect mix of casual, and blingy! I just love it!