Fair and Square

At first glance, the entire OPI Oz Collection was pure eye candy to me. Pink, beige and nude sheers with iridescent, feminine glitters. Yes please. Upon closer inspection, a lot of it seemed to be colours I already had, and at any rate, I usually only allow myself one polish per collection (usually a glitter or metallic shade, as I find them more "special" than ordinary cremes). This time around, my pick was Lights of Emerald City. I was initially drawn to When Monkeys Fly!, but the huge gold hexagonal glitter looked like it would be a nightmare to work with if my experience with Essence Evil Queen was anything to go by. I wish OPI were more affordable in Australia (I believe they're about $8 in the US, compared to $19.95 here), as I would've loved to have picked up a couple of the sheer neutral shades and maybe Which is Witch? just to experiment with layering, nail art ideas and jelly sandwich combinations.

Lights of Emerald City is a clear base with iridescent square glitter and larger white squares. The squares are a little odd, but are definitely the defining feature of the polish. At first they reminded me a bit of white-out tape, but the white colour isn't that stark. The squares have a subtle sheen and glossiness and look more like they've been cut from white ribbon. The iridescent square glitter is the star of the show in my eyes. I love how whimsical and dreamy it makes the polish look. A random scattering with the brush, mixed with the white squares, gives the illusion of glitter being suspended on your nail, kind of like a snow globe when it's been shaken. I think Lights of Emerald City works best with a relatively light base, as the lack of contrast keeps with the soft, pastel theme. Here, I used Revlon ColorStay Longwear Nail Enamel in Pale Cashmere (020), as it was the closest thing I had to I Theodora You from the collection.

What's pictured is actually my third attempt at wearing this polish. The first couple of times the polish bubbled like crazy because I was too impatient with waiting for the base colour to dry, and piled on the glitter too thickly. My previous two attempts were with Scandal Pretty Pink (029) and Revlon Cotton Candy, but Pale Cashmere gave the best result. Sally Hansen Insta-Dri really helped to speed up the drying time of the base coats, then I made sure to use thin coats of the glitter, loading up the brush with enough iridescent squares and 1-2 white squares to coat the nail. It does need a second coat so the glitter isn't too sparse, but I ended up fishing the white squares from the wand with a toothpick and positioning them manually on the nail. It sounds tedious, but in the end it was the quickest way to get an even distribution. The final look is almost like a deconstructed gingham pattern with these gleaming, iridescent flecks over the palest, airiest pink.