Polish Review - OPI "Not Like the Movies"

 

Today I have another of the OPI Katy Perry polishes to share -- this one is the purple/silver/green polychromatic "Not Like the Movies".

This is a really pretty polish, and I tend to shy away from most purples and pinks on anti-girly principle, heh. I ended up with the poly/duochrome version of this, though I find the whole "silver NLTM" controversy really interesting. Why? Because I remember that when I first added it to my Amazon wishlist, where I keep track of all of the clothing and cosmetics that I eventually want, I thought of it as a silvery blue, not a purple duochrome. Don't get me wrong - I'm not sorry that I bought the polish, but it is also nice to know that I'm vindicated in my original perception! I did not know at all how "purple/green duochrome" could translate to "silvery blue" in my brain, though stranger things have happened. Now I would really like to find the silver bottle. Now, enough conceptual comments. On to the polish itself.

For some great pictures and a comparison with the dupe-like Deborah Lippman polish "Wicked Game", take a look Polishology's fantastic post.

The application is really nice, though with two coats it is really easy to get semi-visible bald patches that are not really visible until you get it at the wrong angle in the sunlight (though that's annoying as crap for me). Especially when it's going "purple", there is a really nice silver shimmer running throughout, but I have had problems with it "piling up". What I mean by this is that on a couple of nails, I have these goopy little bits where lots of shimmer decided to aggregate once it started to dry. It isn't horrible, but I think you can see it in the Polishology pictures as well. It also likes to collect at the edges of the nail, which you can see in those photos as well.

The color is really, really nice. The "purple" is the predominant color, and it's somewhere between a deep lavender and plum. The "green" is gorgeous and I wish it came out more -- a pretty olive with a lot of shimmer. 

This lasts a nice amount of time --  a little edge-wear, but not a lot of major chipping.

I honestly did not like this with Black Shatter. This is the second time I've tried NWTM, and I got through applying one nail with the shatter last time before I realized it would not work. It effectively kills the duo/polychrome aspect, and looks more like purple leopard print than NWTM+Black Shatter. Hey, wait, I have a shimmery purple/silver leopard print shirt... maybe I'll have to give the combination another chance this winter.

Do I like it? Yes, I wore it before I went to Europe and I almost brought it as one of my three polish choices for wearing over there, but I think the purple holds me back from wearing it a lot -- it's elegant, but I am just not a purple girl. Still, it's definitely staying, and the fact I'm giving it a second/third wear already should say that it is a great polish.

Polish Review - OPI "Last Friday Night"

Today I have yet another nail polish review for you. I am wearing the sheer-as-hell blue-base, rainbow glitter explosion that is "Last Friday Night" by Katy Perry. The song is not one of my favorites off of the CD (and why don't we have an ET polish, I'd like to know, especially given the fabulous nail art that was about to come out of the video), but I do like the polish a lot.

It's sheer as hell. I am not exaggerating. The photo of the bottle might convince you that it has a fairly solidly blue base color, but it's barely even visible. But if you can tolerate that, and tolerate the fact that it will be between a four and seven-coater (also not exaggerating), it is a really, really pretty polish. It's eye-catching to me after two days wearing it, and even where it is a little bit goopy, you can't see it, because the eye doesn't like to see the lumpier areas. It's a really flattering shade of blue on light/blue-toned skin, too, once you can see it!

I also had the strangest phenomenon with this nail polish. Maybe it was because of the multi-multi-layers, but entire nails worth of polish would randomly start to disengage from the nail. They don't chip at all, but they completely come off! I do not understand why this is happening, but it's the only real drawback aside from the lack of opacity.

Will I wear it again, in spite of the problems? Definitely. It's shiny, and I like shiny things. :D