OPI Burlesque Glitter Swatches

The OPI Burlesque Collection was an amalgamation of both OPI glitters and foil-ish shimmers. Before the Holiday season is up and these polishes are no longer available, I thought I'd compile a few swatches of the four glitters I bought (out of the six that make up the glitter part of the collection). Get these nail lacquers while you can!



The glitters that interested me the most were (from left to right) Bring On The Bling, Sparkle-icious, Show It And Glow It!, and Simmer & Shimmer.


Now I do my swatching just a bit differently than you might see on other blogs, so I thought it was worth it to show you, and share my experiences with these glitter polishes.



To test the opaque factor of each polish, I layered my middle finger and pinky with a half coat of one of the two matte polishes shown above. I used both OPI Alpine Snow Matte and OPI Russian Navy Matte because the mattes leave a nice surface to paint on and they are both dramatic shades (one being very light, the other very dark), to contrast with the glitter polishes.




First up, Bring on the Bling. This polish looks mostly gold in shade along with a sparse dispersion of other colors of glitter. The other two colors in the glitter I thought stood out the most were the green and pink pieces of glitter, so while this color is great for the Holiday season, I think it will also make a great Spring polish.




On my index and middle fingers, there is one coat of Bring on the Bling, with two coats on my ring finger and pinky.


With one coat you can clearly see distinct gaps, where the glitter seems to clump in some places while it's missing from others. At two coats, the white matte under the two layers on my pinky is not really visible. Two to three coats will give you complete coverage with this glitter polish (depending on how heavy handed you are painting on the polish), so no undercoat would really be needed.



OPI Sparkle-icious is the polish that a number of people were hoping would be a dupe to Mad as a Hatter. Well, it's not, as you'll see a few photos down, but besides that, this is the only glitter that differed from the rest of the glitters in this collection.



One coat on index and middle fingers, with two coats on my two right-most fingers (as shown in the photo above and below).




Sparkle-icious proved to be different from the rest of the Burlesque glitters because it is equal parts gold, blue, and fuchsia glitter, with all pieces of glitter being the same particle size. Because there are no micro-particles of glitter as there seem to be in each of the other glitter lacquers, this polish does not get complete coverage in two coats (as clearly visible on the pinky nail - far right - where the matte navy blue shade is still visible under the glitter polish).



In the picture above, on the left is Mad as a Hatter, and on the right is Sparkle-icious. You can clearly see from the bottles standing side-by-side that these lacquers are different in shade. Biggest difference? Mad as a Hatter leans more silvery-violet, while Sparkle-icious has no silver and the purple shade of glitter inside the bottle leans more pink than purple.





Show it and Glow it! is a pink/purple shade. What is interesting about this lacquer is that while it leans towards the violet section of the color wheel, it clearly has a variety of other colors including silver, a bit of yellow-gold, green, blue, and possibly other colors that makes this lacquer more of a hidden gem than it first seems.



On the left two fingers is one coat, and on the right two is two coats. On the middle finger over the white polish, you can see that the micro-glitter in this polish is the same fuchsia color as the larger glitter, which is what leaves this lacquer looking very pink and purple in hue.



Two to three coats should give you complete coverage, but you can get away with two coats, without any major gap of your nail showing through.





OPI Simmer & Shimmer (or Simmer and Shimmer, as I sometimes refer to it) is the blue shade of this collection. Like Show it and Glow it!, Simmer & Shimmer is made up of a multitude of different glitter particles, but because it also has blue micro-glitter in it, the polish leans more blue than any other shade.


One coat of Simmer & Shimmer on index and middle fingers, two coats on ring and pinky.



Two to three coats will give you great coverage, so a base color is not needed on this one.


So there are the four glitters I have to share with you. Get them while they're still in stores if you are considering buying any! Do you have a favorite from the collection?

Well, like all glitters they are a pain to remove, but worth it if you want a truly Sparkling polish! From the collection, Sparkle-icious is the only lacquer I would say really needs an undercoat of a solid color if you don't want to see the nail underneath it. And in terms of dry and wear time, all of these lacquers dried surprisingly quick and stayed on well for the few days I tried two of them out as full manicures.

Hope this helps in your Holiday/nail polish shopping!