OPI Serena Glam Slam! France 2011 - Rally Pretty Pink and Red Shatter

OPI and Serena Williams have just released the next installment of their Glam Slam! series to coincide with the French Open. This time there are two sets of colors which each have a sparkling polish shade alongside a new shade of OPI's Shatter crackle polish.


Rally Pretty Pink. This is a sheer dark pink/mauve/plummy brown base with insane amounts of bright, shiny gold metal flake sparkle. Looks and sounds familiar, doesn't it? Zoya Faye? They seem very similar to me. Faye seems deeper and richer, Rally Pretty Pink seems lighter and slightly pinker. I don't have my bottle of Faye with me so I haven't been able to do a true side-by-side evaluation to determine just how similar they are. I love this (like I loved Faye), it's a stunningly gorgeous color.


Red Shatter over Rally Pretty Pink. Red Shatter is really fascinating! As you can probably tell from the pictures, it's sheer. It's like a jelly crackle. Because if the see-through quality of this, details of the base polish show through the red. See all the sparkles from Rally Pretty Pink? Pretty cool. Another interesting effect of the sheerness is that the tone of the red shatter can change based on what you layer under it.



See how much warmer it looks here with the orange showing through? This is OPI Red Shatter over Finger Paints Outta Sight Orange. This looks awesome over glittery orange, like a big shiny sparkling fireball.

The formula on both was great. Nice and smooth, good texture, fast dry time. The crackle effect works much better over dry polish, but I used it over wet polish in these pictures and it's still pretty good. Just be aware that when applying over wet polish, the crackle will spread as it dries and take the base polish with it, causing bald spots.

I love both of these, but I must say... what an odd color combination. I don't know how much I like the red crackle polish over the golden-mauve base color, I think it blends in too much. I don't dislike them together, but I think the crackle effect doesn't seem as pronounced as with other colors. Needs more contrast. Maybe a yellow underneath?

(These were sent to me for review.)

Playing with China Glaze Crackle Glaze again...

I did this mani that I really hated, but I didn't feel like taking it off and starting over. No matter what I layered over it, I still hated it... So I figured, why not add one more layer just to see what it looks like? I didn't necessarily love what I ended up with, but it was at least better. I photographed the evidence:


Here's me playing with China Glaze Fault Line and Broken Hearted. I don't remember everything it's layered over, but it included Milani Magenta Metal as the base and Sally Hansen HD in Byte on top of everything. I liked the subtle crackle effect of Fault Line with little glints of duochrome sparkle from Byte peeking through. Fault Line still doesn't crack as well as the other shades, but I did get it to crackle more this time by applying it over completely dry polish and waiting 5 minutes before applying topcoat.



This one I actually liked. It's China Glaze Lightning Bolt over the random pink polish mess. I love the way the glass fleck sparkles in Byte shine through the cracks of the white polish. White crackle is really neat. I want to do it over neon yellow... think I'll try that soon.


So, there's that. Just thought I'd share a few more layering combinations with the crackles. I'm still a bit obsessed with crackle. I don't think I've done more than one or two manis in the past month that haven't had crackle on them...

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Layering

A few of you suggested that I try layering the crackles over each other, and I was curious to see how it would turn out... So, I layered some more crackle glaze over my existing mani and I think it turned out pretty cool! Here's what I tried:

Broken Hearted over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. This one didn't seem to want to crackle as much over crackle, but it still looks pretty cool. The parts where the pink and blue layer over each other turned purple! I think I like it!

Cracked Concrete over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. I like this one better! It crackled more. I love the color combination. Know what it reminds me of? That weird 'abstract' 80's-90's corporate art with the weird geometric shapes and splatter paint patterns in teal and grey and peach... Know what I'm talking about? The type of generic art you find in offices and stuff? Sometimes there's a palm tree, but usually funky boomerang shapes and triangles...

Sorry about the blurry pictures. I can not hold my hands still today. They're shaking so bad I'm even having a hard time typing. Bleh!

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Collection for Spring 2011

I've been so bored/burned out with nail polish lately, but seeing these arrive on my doorstep totally perked me up! These are amazing. Definitely worth getting excited about. If you're into the crackle finish, you'll love these for sure. I personally love having more color options for layering. So excited to post these...

You can use them over any color or finish you want, I just used what I had nearby and I think the layering combinations turned out pretty nice!


Black Mesh (over China Glaze Happy Go Lucky). Standard black crackle finish. Crackles really quickly, absolutely flawless.


Broken Hearted (over Color Club Bizerk Turq). This is a new one to me- pink crackle! Beautiful candy pink crackle. I think it looks amazing over the neon turquoise, but I have so many ideas for layering this. I want to try it with yellow and orange next!


Cracked Concrete (over Essie Nice is Nice). Medium grey crackle. About the same color as China Glaze Recycle, just in a crackle finish! This one looks really good over pastel pink, too, but I wanted to try it over pastel purple to see how it looked. Looks good to me!


Crushed Candy (over Essie French Affair). This may be my favorite of all of them. It's a light turquoise blue, along the same lines as China Glaze For Audrey. Love this over the pastel pink. It reminds me of Saved By The Bell or something... 1940's-50's kitchens?


Fault Line (over China Glaze Midnight Kiss). This is a lovely royal purple shimmer color with a crackle finish. Also, note how it's not very crackled looking. This is why you have to wait for your polish to dry before you apply the crackle! But even doing that, this color still doesn't seem to crackle as much as any of the others:

This is it over completely dry polish and it didn't crackle like the rest. Maybe because this is the thickest of all of them, or because something about the shimmer in the color interferes with the crackling action?

Lightning Bolt (over... actually, I don't remember what color this was... Eep!). A white crackle! This one is more sheer so you will see some of the base color through it. Also:




Anyway...


The formula on these is good! They're not normal polish so you can't really compare it to a normal polish formula. They are thick and you have to apply them quickly because they dry even faster than mattes. They crackle quickly and perfectly and they remove easily, unlike the old-school crackle polishes. They dry matte, so you'll need a topcoat. I used topcoat in my pictures (except for the second picture of Fault Line).

I used a sort of random application technique on some of these to try to get a different shape happening. I like the vertical crackle lines, but I also like bigger random chunks of crackle too! These are really fun to play with. I adore crackle polishes and these make me so happy!

They're available now, online and at Sally!

(These were sent to me for review.)

First Valentine's Day Mani

This weekend I did my first Valentine's Day-inspired manicure. It's not quite the typical Valentine's theme, but I had the urge to use these colors together, and this is what happened!

I think I'll try to do a couple more. Maybe I'll re-do that Illamasqua Heart mani that looks like saddle shoes, but this time do a better job. I think for my actual Valentine's Day manicure I'm going to use the Art Club Glam decals with the gold hearts, maybe over light pink or white.

I tried a different technique for applying Black Shatter this time, thanks so much everyone for the tips! You guys rock.



This was: Two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Night Lights over one coat of NYC Black (not a very good black polish, sadly) with OPI Black Shatter over two coats of Nicole OMB! on ring fingers and thumb. Night Lights is a nice chunky holo, sadly, this type of lighting is not good for capturing holo.

On this hand I tried a zig-zag diagonal pattern for applying the crackle polish and I think it turned out great!

I forgot to take a picture of the other hand until I'd already been wearing this for a couple days:

On this hand I did the random-blobs-of-crackle technique, but I don't think I did it right, it didn't crackle enough cause I made the blobs too thick. Very different look from the other two methods, though! I got bad shrinkage on my thumb because I did two coats of Seche Vite instead of regular topcoat and then Seche. Lesson learned!

Last night while I was out grocery shopping, I picked up some really cool Kiss decals that I think would make a good gothy Valentine's day design... Now I just have to think of a creative way to use them. I'll try to post a picture of them later.

OPI Black Shatter over Color Club Jackie OH!

Another layering combination with OPI Black Shatter that I really liked.


OPI Black Shatter over Color Club Jackie OH!. I love the combination of the neon with the black on top, it makes the neon look so much brighter. This reminds me of lava. If you have a neon pink or orange, you have to try this, it looks so cool in real life. I've noticed that my Black Shatter always crackles into vertical stripes... that's odd. I want some more random square chunks to happen when it crackles... The kind that make it look like a giraffe pattern... How do I get it to do that?

OPI Black Shatter over Nicole My Lifesaver

The full manicure picture of this didn't turn out, but I wanted to post this cause I liked the combination so much:

OPI Black Shatter over Nicole My Lifesaver. Washed out (and my skin looks weirdly red) because of the flash, but this is really more about the Shatter than the base color. Look how perfectly it crackled! I love this stuff so much. It's so much better than the old crackle polishes. It crackles so quickly and doesn't take an hour to remove.

I also think it's quite funny that I'm wearing a Katy Perry nail polish over a Justin Bieber nail polish. Two musicians that I know next to nothing about and would rather eat my mother-in-law's turkey lasagna than listen to even one their songs.... Yet here they are on my nails, their colors joined together in perfect harmony and greatly admired by me.

But, yeah, I really love this combination. Nice contrast between light base color and black crackle effect.

OPI Katy Perry and Serena Williams Grand Slam Collections (with Black Shatter Crackle Polish!) Spring 2011

These are technically two separate collections, but they really seem to go together and combined they make six polishes which is about the size of the average polish collection.

I don't know anything about Katy Perry besides the fact that she's cute, has really cool nail designs and blue hair. I do know Serena Williams, though; champion tennis star and brand new nail tech. That's one of the most interesting celebrity collaborations I've seen!

Katy Perry has four brand new colors plus Black Shatter crackle topcoat and Serena Williams has one color plus Black Shatter to go along with it. Black Shatter really is the star here, but all the colors are fantastic:

Katy Perry for OPI Collection

Last Friday Night. This is opalescent glitter with some tiny iridescent electric blue sparkles in a sheer blue tinted base. I know I have at least one other polish that's similar to this- it's either Sally Hansen or Confetti, possibly both even... But this one has that extra something to it. The tiny blue sparkles. They're amazing. They glow and shimmer and light up the whole polish. This is a very sheer shade. It's perfect for layering but you can also wear it alone and I think the end result is magical. Since it's so sheer it doesn't have the same depth as bottle color, but I think it still looks fantastic.


Not Like The Movies. I took a million pictures of this one because it's too awesome for just one shot! It's a purple/green duochrome with some really delicate shiny flaky shimmer in it. It's a little sheer and frosty but it totally works. This is one of the few metallic duochromes to incorporate glitter and actually have it work. Normally a metallic frost formula like this creates a lumpy, bumpy, bubbly look when combined with glitter, but OPI totally nailed it. No lumps. All the glitter shows up and it's absolutely perfect. It seems like a lot more care went into creating this frost/glitter shade than some of the ones from other brands I've tried lately. It's not too frosty, the duochrome is really strong and the glitter adds a really nice touch to it. This might be my favorite of the collection (aside from Black Shatter). I love the name, too.


Teenage Dream. This reminds me of the pictures I've seen of some of those really rare Japanese and UK exclusive OPI glitters I've seen, but I don't have any of them to compare! This is a light pink fine glitter mixed with some holo-opal medium sized glitter in a clear base. It's an opaque glitter and might be a little too dense for layering. It's so pretty and fairy-like. Am I getting sick? That's two pinks in a row that I've fallen for this year!


The One That Got Away. My pictures of this aren't the best- it's one of those crazy luminous shades that make my camera do that weird glowy radioactive looking thing... But if you'll take a look at the bottle color you'll get a better idea of how it looks in real life. It's a red-toned wine purple with some really shiny metallic flaky shimmer in it. You have to see this in person, it just glows!

This collection comes with the brand new Black Shatter topcoat. If you've been into nail polish for a while, you may recall some of the older crackle polishes- namely the Cover Girl Crackles. You apply them over a base color and as they dry they crack and give a neat two-toned cracked/shattered look. This is basically the same thing but with a much improved formula.

It is recommended to apply this over completely dry polish and I agree with that recommendation. You get the best shatter effect that way. When the polish is still slightly wet, the topcoat doesn't crack as much and you end up with larger pieces and not as much of the under color showing through. And, if the polish is too wet, the crackling action and fragmentation of the topcoat takes the wet polish with it, leaving bald spots in between the cracked pieces.

Black Shatter does dry a bit matte and it has texture to it, so I'd recommend a good coat of topcoat after it's done doing its thing. This smooths the texture but also helps keep the cracked pieces on- they can actually fall off when they're fully dry!

Here it is over the Katy Perry shades:

OPI Black Shatter over Last Friday Night.


OPI Black Shatter over Not Like The Movies.

OPI Black Shatter over Teenage Dream.


OPI Black Shatter over The One That Got Away.


Serena Williams Grand Slam Collection

Simply Smashing. This is a yellow-green "lemon lime" type of shade. It might just be the power of suggestion, but it reminds me of a tennis ball. Am I that impressionable? But it really does make me think of a tennis ball, especially one that's been used for playing fetch for a couple weeks. It's a little bit dirty, not quite neon green like a brand new tennis ball. It has a glass fleck type of shimmer- really bright shiny particles of shimmer. Slightly duochrome, too, there's a bit of orange reflect on this shade.

And here it is paired with Black Shatter:

OPI Black Shatter over Simply Smashing.

Isn't Black Shatter great? I'm a bit obsessed with it already. It applies so easily and shatters so quickly. With the old ones you used to have to wait a while and it would take forever to dry. The old generations of crackle polish were also a huge pain to remove. They stuck to your nails like cement and took forever to dissolve with acetone. OPI's Black Shatter crackle polish removes as easily as any normal polish and dries really quickly. It's really, really great and I kinda want to use it for every manicure now.

Just for fun, here's what it looks like over yellow:

I had China Glaze Lighthouse on when Black Shatter arrived and I had to play with it immediately. In my opinion, it's quite a stunning combination. I love the contrast between the creme black shards and the glimmery yellow brightness. I think Black Shatter looks amazing over sparkly shades.


This is one has a coat of OPI Last Friday Night over China Glaze Lighthouse and then a final coat of OPI Black Shatter. The pretty opal glitter might be a little hard to see in these pictures, but it added a really nice subtle something that made it just that much more interesting.

The formula on these was good. All of the shades were on the sheer side and needed at least three coats. I did three coats in all these pictures. Last Friday Night was unusually thick and I'm not sure if that's normal. It applied just fine, but it was almost jelly-like, I'm wondering if mine was a little dried out when I got it because it didn't look completely full, either. Anyway, application was good aside from the sheerness of the shades. Dry time was very good and removal was painless.

I love all the colors in this set. Nothing boring, nothing plain, it's 100% fun. I love the edgy and fun look of Black Shatter and it does look rather nice over all these shades. I think OPI did an excellent job on these. It's bright and shiny, glitter-heavy, sparkly, playful and includes an improved formula Crackle topcoat to make it even more fun. I'm absurdly happy to see that crackle polish, too. It's such a fun look and it really makes people stop and ask you how you did it!

My only complaint is that I wish there were more colors! But I am quite satisfied with the collections as they are. There's duochrome, glitter, a little holo, and an awesome crackle polish. Not finding any flaws at all. They didn't play it safe this time and I'm thankful for that!


(These were sent to me for review.)