OPI Ulta Exclusives Holiday 2010

Every year around Christmas, OPI does a set of three holiday-themed polishes exclusively for Ulta. Last year's collection raised the bar so high, that I was super excited to see what they did this year.... But I was sadly disappointed, after hearing from a very reliable source, that no one knew anything about them and there probably wouldn't be any this year.

Then, imagine my surprise, when everyone on Twitter was, well, atwitter with excitement over this new OPI Ulta exclusive gold glitter polish. I immediately drove to Ulta and returned home with these safely in tow.




All The Berry Best. A medium berry toned red shimmer. It's rather washed out here because of the lighting; it's a couple shades darker in real life. Regardless, it's my least favorite of the collection. It has some really great gold duochrome in the bottle, but on the nail it's just an average looking red shimmer. It does have a really nice velvety looking finish, though.



Gift of Gold. Now THIS is a glitter. Amazing. It's so ridiculously sparkly. It's a lighter gold mixed with some darker gold and even a bit of what looks like copper or bronze glitter. It's very opaque, too, needing only one to two coats depending on how thick or even you do your coats. It's still rough and hard to remove like other glitters, but it's just soooooo pretty. The best one in the collection for sure. OPI really knows how to do glitter and I'm really glad they've been doing a lot of it lately.


Plum Full Of Cheer. The flash picture shows the base color of the polish and also shows the pretty multi-colored shimmer, but in real life it looks more like the top picture. This is not a bad color at all, it's extremely pretty, one of my favorite types of purples, but it's just so common lately that it doesn't feel special to me. Shimmery, glowy, red-based dark purples are great, I think I'm just a little burned out on them. I had hoped for something really special like last year's Visions of Sugarplum.

Wait a minute... Wasn't last year's Ulta Exclusive holiday collection a gold, a berry-red and a dark purple? What was the year before that? I only remember the gorgeous pink microglitter one.

The formula was good, so no complaints there. The Gift of Gold shade was really thick, but that's part of what makes it so opaque and dense. I only needed two coats of each color (and that's what I'm wearing in these pictures) and the drying time was very good. They were a little dull without topcoat, so I am also wearing topcoat for these pictures.

They're nice, and Gift of Gold is very nice, but they didn't knock me over with awesome like last year's set. Maybe they'll do something more unique this year!

Holiday Looks

I can't believe Christmas is over. So sad. It's even sadder because all the snow melted right after Christmas! At first I thought it was great because it was 55 degrees (!!!), but the very next day it went right back down to 15. Ugh. If it's going to be this cold, I demand snow!

The holidays were pretty good, though. I got a bunch of awesome presents for Christmas, got to play a lot of Guitar Hero and put together the annual gingerbread house with my family and I didn't get sick at all! I always seem to be sick on Thanksgiving or Christmas, but not this year!

I never did end up doing a different mani for Christmas- the snowflakes stayed on. I sorta ran out of time... Didn't need to stay up until 4 am to do my nails!

But I did snap a few pictures of the eye looks I did...


This was Christmas Eve's look. I wanted something super festive and last year I did this combination of red lid with green crease that didn't really work that well... This combination looked much better! Though, I wasn't totally happy with the gold...

This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Aromaleigh Party Dress on lid
MAC Emerald Green pigment in crease and on lower lashline
Pure Luxe OMG wet as liner (I know, I know.)
I don't remember which mascara, but it was either Lash Blast or Grow Luscious

I put some red Aromaleigh glitter over the liner but it didn't show up at all, you couldn't see it at all in real life and I don't see it in the pictures, either.


For Christmas Day I wanted the same kind of look as the last one, but I thought the gold was too shiny. I decided on a matte green instead and I liked it better:

I see specks of mascara on my lid that I didn't notice until I looked at the pictures. Huh. And don't worry, I fixed my brows.

This one was:
Shadow Insurance
MAC Bitter on lid
MAC Emerald Green in crease and on lower lashline
Pure Luxe OMG wet as liner

I love a matte lid. It always looks so smooth and soft focus. Matte lid with glittery stuff everywhere else! Except not much glitter on these days. I did plain red lips. I don't think I can really pull off red lips.

Then, after Christmas was over, I felt all sad and wanted to do black and grey:


This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Fyrinnae Dinosaur Plushie wet on lid
Hourglass Prism (black half) on lid and lower lashline
I don't remember the mascara or the liner... Everything is kind of a blur...

Dinosaur Plushie is really pretty, I didn't really capture it well in the pictures. It's a silver with hologram-type shimmer. It goes on a little... rough? Flaky? But it's so nice and sparkly.


And then, on New Year's Eve, I just wanted to go all out.



This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Silver half of L'Oreal HIP Platinum Duo
Black half of Hourglass Prism duo
Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy over Platinum
MAC 3D Silver glitter packed on top of Pixie Epoxy
Kat Von D Autograph Liquid Liner in Black Metal Love
Cover Girl Lash Blast with a little Magic Lash between coats
(A little Urban Decay All Nighter setting spray over the glitter to keep it on all night)


I haven't had any luck using Pixie Epoxy as a base for shadows, but it is EXCELLENT for getting glitter to stick. I had almost zero fallout- all the fallout was from the brush, not my lid! And it stayed on without fallout all night. I put the Pixie Epoxy on pretty thick over the silver HIP shadow and immediately patted on a bunch of MAC 3D silver before the epoxy had a chance to dry. Perfection.

And to make it even more ridiculous? I wore OCC Anime lip tar. Anime is the most ridiculous neon pink ever and I adore it. I've been meaning to do a Lip Tar review for ages... I need to get on that.


I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions yet. I'm thinking I'm going to try to spend less time online... Maybe I'll resolve to review more random items from my collection... Or maybe not to wait a year in between haircuts? Hmm... I'm drawing a blank. Did you make any resolutions?

Christmas week

This past week has been filled with so much wonderful-ness (is that a word? If not, it should be!).  We've had quite a few friends in town, we've been able to spend time with lots of family, and we've pretty much been on a holiday high for the past week.  Plus, Henry has added a whole new level of AWESOME to all things Christmas.  I keep thinking forward to next year when he is 13 months old and how amazing that will be.  It's all just very exciting.  One thing I'm really really looking forward to is getting our house all decked out for the holidays.  We had barely moved in when Henry was born, so we've hardly got to decorate in the first place, but our holiday decor was severely lacking.  Next year I'm looking forward to really doing it up and putting into motion all of the fun holiday ideas I have floating around in my head.  But first things first, we need to finish getting our house in order!  Now that things have calmed down a bit I can't wait to start getting our home just the way I envision it...and it's times like these that I am SO grateful for my Anthro discount. ;)

I think the photos below do a better job of telling the story of our week better than I can at this late hour, so enjoy!  And again, happy holidays!

In the beginning of the week, Lisa and Mary Alice came to visit Henry and brought him the cutest presents!


The Peters family came up and visited for an evening and we had the best time. Here's Henry and his Auntie Erin- he adored her.


H. also decided to really examine Uncle JP!


We enjoyed Hugo's, as usual.


Later that night we had a handful of friends over to enjoy some pie, it was delicious.


cherry pie I made




gift from the Peters :)


I love this photo of Amber so much!


the next night was Christmas Eve, spent with Hank's family...

Henry II, III, and IV - pretty awesome huh!


Henry and his Aunt Brooke


we played Pictionary- the guys won, boo!






Henry's gifts started piling up...




Later that night we headed to my parents' house so we could wake up there Christmas morning!


Mom and Henry's stocking (Henry too!)


how pretty is my sister?!


Aunt Lauren and Uncle Abe


my favorite Christmas present


dessert!


our cousin Tim brought Henry a hat back from Peru (he is a geologist there)- Henry clearly LOVED it! haha.


and finally, we spent Christmas evening with Sar and Andy. So much fun and Henry loved meeting his Uncle Andy.

Christmas Eve Mani

I really like how this one turned out. Very appropriate seeing that it just started snowing as I type this :)


This was:
Two coats of China Glaze Frosty
Konad m59 in Light Blue Konad Special Polish
Color Club / Art Club silver gems from the holiday gem wheel
INM Out The Door Northern Lights in Silver, fully shaken

I originally tried to do holo silver snowflakes but they didn't show up at all! So then I tried to do gold snowflakes (you can see it on my pinkie) but it looked to warm and un-snowlike. Finally settled on the baby blue Konad polish and it was perfect. Not much contrast, which I like for this design. Added the gems because it didn't look icy and sparkly enough for me and then the Northern Lights because it still wasn't sparkly enough.

I did fewer gems on the left hand just to see how it looked:

I think I like more gems better.

So, I guess it's not specifically Christmassy... More like a winter-themed nail art. Ooh, it would even make a great Hanukkah mani, too.

I'm thinking I want to do something with a green base on Christmas Day. Maybe start with China Glaze Jolly Holly, then do something with gold and red and jewels? Hm. Better start brainstorming.

Since I probably won't get a chance to post tomorrow, I want to wish you all a merry Christmas! ♥