OPI Nicki Minaj swatches (Part 2)

I'm back with the second post in my two-part swatch and review of the OPI Nicki Minaj mini collection...you can see the first post here if you missed it! The first two polishes in the collection were OPI Did It on 'Em and OPI Fly, and the second two are OPI Pink Friday and OPI Metallic 4 Life.

But...wait just a moment?

The packaging clearly says that this polish is OPI Metallic 4 Life, but when I took a closer look at the bottles, it seems like it might be OPI Save Me, a different polish from the collection, instead. Isn't that strange?

Here's images from OPI of each, to compare. Top is OPI Metallic 4 Life, bottom is OPI Save Me.

And here's a picture of the bottle that I got.

Yep, it's NOT OPI Metallic 4 Life. Which is disappointing, because I actually was looking forward to that one! However, after doing this manicure, I did fall in love with what I actually got.

The manicure that I did with OPI Pink Friday and OPI Save Me was inspired by this post on Rebecca Like Nails, which is one of my favorite nail blogs. It's called a Manhattan Cocktail Manicure, and basically, all your nails are one color, except for your thumb and first two fingers on your right hand, or "cocktail hand," and you paint those colors something contrasting, like a fun glitter.

So on my left hand, all my nails are painted in two coats of OPI Pink Friday, with OPI Natural Nails basecoat and China Glaze Fast Forward topcoat. It's a bubble gum pink that I wasn't sure if I liked at first, since I'm not normally a fan of pink, but it's slowly growing on me, and the formula was fantastic.

But on my right hand, my accent nails have a coat of China Glaze Liquid Leather (a great black for layering glitter over!) followed by three coats of OPI Save Me, which is my new favorite glitter! It's got small silver glitter with tiny HOLOGRAPHIC bar glitter! It looks so incredible in the sunlight. I've never had a polish with bar glitter, much less beautiful holographic bar glitter. I can't stop staring at my nails every time I go outdoors.

Three coats of OPI Save Me actually covered pretty well, I'm not sure if I needed the Liquid Leather underneath. Although at first I was super disappointed that I didn't get OPI Metallic 4 Life, I'm over it now because OPI Save Me is so fantastic!

Here's another picture of the glitter, out of focus so you can see the pretty colors in the bar glitter better.

And here's pictures of my hands side by side so you can see the Manhattan Cocktail Mani effect!

What do you think? Did anyone else get OPI Save Me instead of what was supposed to be in the package? Should I go get a large bottle of OPI Metallic 4 Life? Is it worth it? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength - Platinum and Bride to Be (Swatches and Review)

Hey everyone! I'm back with a couple new swatches to show you all! These are Sally Hansen polishes, from the Diamond Strength Nail Color line. I've been fan of Sally Hansen since before high school (I got into painting my nails when I was like 9 or 10!), since they're very affordable and available almost everywhere. But these are actually the first polishes I'd tried from the Diamond Strength series. I don't know why they never jumped out at me before, I think it's probably just because most of the colors are things I'd seen before - lots of sensible pinks and reds. But CVS was having a sale on them a couple weeks ago, and I decided to try a couple. I picked out Platinum and Bride to Be, both of which I thought would be nice on their own and nice to layer over other colors, like black or purple.

For this blog post, I'm going to show you just these polishes on their own. Each took three coats to be somewhere close to opaque, which further strengthens my belief that they're probably best suited for layering.

Platinum, shown above, was extremely sheer. Even after three coats, there was still VNL. It was also a super-thin formula, which made it a little runny and hard to work with. Plus, from some angles it barely even looked like I had anything on my nails at all. So, by itself, this one is perfect for when you just want the barest hint of shine on your tips. It was a little old lady-ish, mostly because of the frost finish in my opinion, but it's still something I might wear to work on a day where I couldn't pull off a more bold color.

I didn't like Bride to Be (above) nearly as much. It had the same formula as Platinum, but after three coats it was more opaque. However, this one was far more silvery and metallic than it looked in the bottle. To me, in  the bottle it looks like a grey with some shimmer. On my fingers, it looked like frosty aluminum foil! If I was going to wear a shade like this one--which I might go for as a metallic silver, I'd want it to be a lot closer to opaque after one coat. This one certaintly wasn't that. I'm going to give this one more shot over a different color, but if it turns out as bad as this I won't be wearing it again.

All in all, I'm less than in love with the Sally Hansen Diamond Strength polishes thus far. I really love the bottle shape, with it's multiple sided-ness and "jewel" embedded into it, but these polishes failed to blow me away. I'd give it one more shot, maybe trying some reds or glitters (are there Diamond Strength glitters?), but if they're like these ones I won't be buying after that.