Halloween 2020: Spiderwebs with OPI Black to Reality

By -

 A recent arrival to my stash was sitting on the desk ready to be filed away, but was so obviously perfect for Halloween that instead it got used right away.

indoor, CF lighting

Spiders and spiderwebs are one of my most favorite halloween designs.  Spooky + anything from the animal kingdom = winning, and all that layered over what's clearly the perfect Halloween season color for me just can't be beat.  Lina Spooklicious 01 was still out after providing images for my last mani, and the spiderwebs and spiders on it meant round 2 with this plate was an easy pick.  Webs are in MoYou London Mercury (chrome polishes are such a PITA but so worth it), and the spiders in El Corazon True Red.

indoor, bright CF lighting

The base for this look is 2 smooth coats of  OPI Black to Reality - I am clearly a sucker for exactly this shade of black-red, since it's about identical to China Glaze X, Trust Fund Just Call My Lawyer, and Vapid Ruffian - they're each close enough that it's not worth doing a comparison, the sort where with a microscope you could tell differences in quantity or size of shimmer particles, but at arm's length would be indistinguishable.

indoor, CF lighting

But sweet baby octopus, there's a reason I love reds like this.  With my skin tone, at any nail length, this would look devastatingly vampy chic.  At my slightly-longer-than-usual length, it's sexy AF.

indoor, bright CF lighting

Black to Reality is an inky off-black base filled to the brim with very fine, borderline metallic scarlet red shimmer.  The shimmer stood out beautifully for me in regular lighting - this time of year,very few of my pics can be outdoor in the sunlight - but despite the strength of the shimmer, this wasn't sheer at all and was 3/4 of the way to opaque at just one coat.  I am as per usual showing 2 + topcoat here.

indoor, bright CF lighting

Rating:  a flawless 5 out of 5 stars for Black to Reality.  This color is dead sexy, the formula was approximately perfect, and it wore like iron.  The darker the color, the quicker it shows even minor edgewear, but I had no problems wearing this for most of a week.  Delicious.

Where to buy:  this was part of the 2018 holiday collection, and didn't go to core, so this may not be hidden on any shelves one usually finds OPI products.  I had no problems picking up a bottle for about $5 on ebay recently, so there's still plenty of this to be found.

~Michelle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ILNP Masquerade & Comparison

By -
Image
Every time I Love Nail Polish releases another batch of their multichromes, my wallet is going to take a little hit.  Their formula is always great, but the colors .  OMG, I die with these super shifters.  From the most recent release, my first pick was Masquerade.  Ginormously pic-heavy post in 3...2...1... Masquerade is a very sheer charcoal grey base packed with magically light-bending pigment that goes from a rich magenta-wine color, through a lighter pink, then bronze, on its way to a vibrantly saturated emerald green.  It took 3 coats to get it to visible opacity, of the sort where it can look sheer if you hold your fingernails up to the light.  Though it's most often a metallic to slightly brush-strokey chrome, in the sunlight, a sparkly shimmer peeks out. outdoor, bright sunlight The color range can be soft and muted: ok, "muted" for something like this, anyway.  outdoor, overcast/cloudy day It can be mostly wine: outdoor, overcast daylight
Read more

Topcoat battle! HK Girl VS Pro-FX quick dry!

By -
Image
I'm sure that every polish geek has a half a handful (or plenty more) topcoats - I myself have my go-to quick dry, a thicker one for chunky or unsmooth finishes, some back-up "lesser" quick drys, and a matte.  Having that many, though, honestly means we're all still looking for MORE! For a couple of years now, my holy grail TC has been HK Girl.  I'd been pretty happy with INM Out the Door for a year or so, but HKG dries much faster to a harder (aka more chip-resistant) finish, so I made that switch around the time we started blogging here.  I've never had the love affair with Seche that plenty do - it seems more stinky to me and I get shrinkage often enough to have never bought more after my first 99 cent mini of it.  I've seen a few blog posts mentioned some behemoth from WalMart, and remembered to pick up a bottle when driven to the commercial den of iniquity by a wild goose chase for multichrome notebooks, which brings us to... Topcoat Battle!!!!
Read more

Sally Hansen Belle of the Ball

By -
Image
 Just a few weeks ago, I saw a stunning swatch pic in the facebook dupes/comparisons group that led me (and I think several others) down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what we were looking at.  Turns out that the original pic was both photoshopped all to hell and from a brand that's no longer active... but several people suggested alternates, including this: indoor, CF lighting Well, hellooooo there, vampy dream. outdoor, bright sunlight The end result of all the image searching is that Sally Hansen released a whole red collection in 2018, several of which weren't truly red, and that one of which was reported as a dead-on dupe for OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, with a more opaque and smooth formula.  Oktoberfest is one of the ones that got away - it looked identical to Germanicure in the bottle, and by the time I realized I'd like both, it was going for crazy prices on ebay.  For a mere $5, I was more than willing to take this possible dupe for a spin. outdoor, dire
Read more