I’ve been looking forward to the release of OPI’s textured Liquid Sand finish, and today I have swatches of three of the Liquid Sand polishes from the Mariah Carey collection: Got Your Number, Can’t Let Go and The Impossible.
The Liquid Sand finish is very difficult to capture on camera. Like the name suggests, it’s a finish that feels like fine grade sand, like a coarse grain nail file. It gives the same effect as dipping a nail into loose glitter, but with perfect coverage and excellent adhesion. It’s almost like the “polish” part of the polish evaporates.
Got Your Number is a blue base with holographic silver dust and round glitters, and iridescent “sand”. The blue is a lot stronger than Last Friday Night, and with far better coverage. This is two coats – the visible nail line is a lot less obvious in person:
Can’t Let Go contains small purple glitter, larger purple hexes and iridescent “sand” in a clear purple base. It’s quite opaque in two coats:
The Impossible has a slightly pinkish red base, with the same iridescent “sand”, as well as red and silver holo dust, red hex glitter and silver holo stars.This is a bit sheer, and I’ve used three coats – unfortunately, as you layer more coats on top, the Liquid Sand effect gets less sandy and more grainy, which I don’t like as much. The stars were quite easy to fish out of the bottle.
Overall, I love the Liquid Sand finish, much more than I expected to from the initial swatches! For a girl who usually finds glitter polishes “too blingy”, this finish is a great alternative to using matte top coat or jelly sandwiches. The dry time is quite quick, about the same as if I had used a quick-dry top coat. My biggest gripe about the collection is that the Liquid Sand polishes get caught up in the Pro-Wide brush, making them even more unwieldy – a slimmer brush could be easier to handle with these special finishes.
Of course, these shades can also function as regular glitters, with the use of a thick glossy top coat. Look out for swatches of those here soon!
OPI’s Mariah Carey Collection will be available in Australia in January 2013, RRP $19.95.
These were provided for editorial consideration, which did not affect my opinion. For more information, see Disclosure Policy
Gorgeous swatches! I really enjoyed wearing Got Your Number!
Thanks! I think GYN is my favourite of them so far 🙂
your swatches are great and Got Your Number looks great!
Thanks! It’s my favourite too 🙂
Wooow thanks for sharing! I’ve been dying to see these. And I can’t wait to see what they look like with a nice thick and glossy topcoat!! Must be mindblowing!
Oooo I don’t mind these now that I’ve seen your swatches. Although I still don’t think I want to actually wear them lol
Oh wow these look gorgeous, to bad they aren’t going to be available before Christmas as that’s always my excuse for odd looking nails. I imagine this would be impossible to remove though!
i want to try this soooo bad!
These are gorgeous! How horrifying is the removal process? Are they on par with other glitters? Better? Worse?
I’m still on the fence
Gorgeous swatches! I’m still not sure if I like these, but they look great on you. 🙂
Not sure how I feel about these. They look really neat but I think the texture would drive me crazy. 🙂
I LOVE that finish, it’s so different! Thanks for showing this to us, as for me, my favorite is “Can’t Let Go”.
The different finish actually.made my boyfriend like them, and he’s not one to ever like me getting more polish 😉
These are really interesting looking.
Great swatches – not sure I like this much texture – it might grow on me – I did not like suedes and mattes when they first appeared and gritting glitter still takes me some real commitment but only because I know how long it will take for me to get it off…will read this again to see if you say anything about wear time – maybe if these wear like armor for a week then I might like them!
I can tell you already that they don’t wear like armour, unfortunately 🙁
I wasn’t sure I’d like these but the blue looks pretty impressive. I’ll have to check them out IRL I think!
Yes, it’s pretty hard to imagine them from swatches! I’m going to have to have a grope of the one I didn’t swatch before deciding to buy.
Thanks for great swatches! I was very curious how these will look. They look nice but I’m not sure how they would feel on in reall life. Like if I’d be wearing a jumper would it catch on it etc.? Not over the moon atm…
Very interesting polishes! I think the texture would drive me to distraction though. Thanks for swatching these. I am intrigued.
It’s pretty fun to play with 😉
How was removal? Is it as difficult as standard glitter polish??
Those are amazing!
I love the way these look! I want them now!
Hi,
I hadn’t heard about these yet, thanks for posting about them. I love the look of them but I’m wondering were they really hard to remove? I find it a lot of work removing glitter polishes, unless I use Butter London’s Powder Room and that’s expensive. Do you have a nail polish remover that work’s fantastically for glitter?
Karen
http://www.balmainbeauty.com
This comment has been removed by the author.
Love them all (itching to try them on), all in my wishlist now. Did you listen to Mariah while polishing? 😉
I’m still undecided about the liquid sand finish. I think I’ll have to see it in person to make my mind up. 🙂
Hmmm…kinda weird! Not sure if I like them or not, guess I’ll have to see in person.
what was the removal like michelle? worse or better than glitter? (im hoping u say better co i really like them!) xxx
beautiful swatches!
Pretty…but what is removal like??? I need to know this before I consider buying as they are a final sale – like it or ot!!!
I would give “the impossible” 2 out of 5 stars. Had to fish for the star shaped glitter as it never came out on the brush. Given the 5% chance you actually manage to get a star on the brush, it won’t apply from the brush anyway as everything else in the bottle is way more dense than the slightly larger star shaped glitter.
The directions on the bottle suggest “one coat base color, two coats of ‘the impossible'”. I decided to skip the base color because the polish seemed opaque enough on its own and I wanted as much glitter as possible, not to mention fast and easy drying time.
Boy was I wrong. My first attempt resulted in literally 4 stars total on all my nails after 2 whole coats each (20 nails, 4 stars total?!). Being new to this polish I thought a third coat wouldn’t do any harm, and it might add another glitter star or two… WRONG. Fifteen minutes later and I knew that polish was not going to dry, as it wiped off with zero effort.
May I note that throughout this whole process I had to dig and fish for glitter stars and I only managed to obtain a few, which I promptly grabbed with tweezers and hand-applied.
FINALLY my third try and 3 hours later I manage 2 coats per nail, and I dig out 2 stars per nail, plus Seche Vite to keep everything smooth and intact (even though this nail polish is meant to be “sandy” and matte). Still looks like crap and I’ll probably re-do them ASAP.
Your swatches are beautiful!! Especially the ones with top coat, I think I would try one of these and put top coat on it. I will purchase on the market now for my wife. She loves to use this type of colors. check this