Lacquer Slacker Liz: OPI Fifty is the New Fabulous and CrowsToes Love Stinks

Fifty is the New Fabulous was released by OPI as a limited edition anniversary polish exclusive to Sally Beauty earlier this year. It is a medium vibrant cool rosy pink with magenta undertones, very floral and feminine. A decidedly similar incarnation of this shade appeared a couple of months later as Girls Love Ponies in OPI's Ford Mustang Collection. It's also quite similar to the pink from the OPI Gwen Stefani collection, Hey Baby, and given the universal appeal of this kind of color I think that it's reasonable to conclude that most mainstream brands will have a shade that is like it in this their line up.

Fifty is the New Fabulous does distinguish itself by have as near to perfect a formula as you'll ever find from OPI, and OPI knows how to formulate a beautifully-applying creme polish. The consistency is quite fluid but not runny, and butter smooth with an excellent balance of fluidity and viscosity for painting. It has a silky glide over the nail, is amenable to thin or thicker coats, and is easily manipulated with OPI's flat, flexible pro-wide brush. Pigmentation is also excellent, with very nearly completely opaque coverage in one coat, but you'll want to do two to make sure the opacity is even across the nail. Cleanup is easy and straightforward, without any traces of staining. Fifty is the New Fabulous dries naturally in good time to such a gorgeous glossy finish that makes it feel redundant to topcoat, but I did it anyway to protect from marring and ensure drying of all the layers.

Photos show two coats of Fifty is the New Fabulous over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Poshe.

OPI Fifty is the New Fabulous

This kind of bright, vivid color reminds me of Zinnias and all the wonderful pinks they come in. It's a fiercely colorful, vivacious, grown up pink, a more worldly version of Barbie pink. I love it, it's so buoyant and full of life. And it seemed like a perfect color to act as a base for CrowsToes' Love Stinks.

Love Stinks was released by indie polish maker CrowsToes as part of the ValenCrows collection for Valentine's Day 2014. It's a medium electric pink that's absolutely packed with dazzling blue particulate shimmers that possess a duochromatic shift from bright blue to deep Brink pink, a reddish magenta/fuchsia shade, at oblique angles in certain lights. It's ethereal, otherworldly and luminous but not dainty. Ain't nothin' goody-two-shoes about this polish. In fact, it's got a fierce, flashy vibe with boatloads of chutzpah, plus there's a glass fleck look to the shimmers in the sun, where they sparkle like crazy. From what I've seen online, it can be built to opacity on its own in multiple coats. I dunno, my bottle is pretty sheer. I didn't want to take the chance that I wouldn't get opaque coverage so I decided to layer it.

Application was a breeze. The consistency is smooth, a little thick and kind of fluffy from all of the shimmers. It goes on smoothly and evenly without showing brushstrokes as many polishes this full of particulate shimmers can do. I used two coats to get as much out of the shimmer effects as I could, and the only problem I had was making sure that the polish underneath was completely covered. To that end I did kind of make a mess, and those shimmers do stick, so my cleanup left something to be desired. You'll notice some twinkle to my nail surrounds from those sticky little shimmers in the photos. Love Stinks dries naturally in very good time to a finish that is silky smooth, although there is visual texture that gives it a slightly grainy look. But it only looks grainy, you can't feel it. I used a topcoat of Seche Vite to pop the shimmer colors and, of course, to help all the layers to dry as I had a considerable amount of polish on my nails at this point.

Photos show two coats of Love Stinks over the Fifty is the New Fabulous manicure above, with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

CrowsToes Love Stinks over OPI Fifty is the New Fabulous

Laurie aka Ms. Crow, the owner and creative force behind CrowsToes, calls this a "strong woman's pink." I'll say! This is a killer polish! If it were a woman, it'd be a female assassin, possibly from another planet. It has a fluid, sleek dimensionality to it that makes you feel like you've got superpowers! Bad guys, beware! I shall crrrush you with my Love-Stinks-bedecked little fingah!

The flecky visual texture of the shimmers in Love Stinks reminds me of another CrowsToes with color-shifting shimmer, Little Miss Sunshine, which I love. The fleckier the better, I say! Love Stinks has a slightly silkier look than Little Miss Sunshine, but they've got some alleles in common, I'd say.

Love Stinks can also be layered over a dark polish -- blue, purple or black -- for a totally different look, as Valesha of Peachy Polish did in her review of this lacquer, here.

love,
Liz

2 comments:

MelissaNovember 10, 2014 at 4:08 PM
Okay...so I remember when 50 came out. I wanted it really badly. I see pinks like this one and Hey, Baby and Girls Love Ponies and suddenly all my rational thought leaks out of my right ear. I DID manage to snag Hey, Baby even if I didn't get 50. But MAN...when you made a "Love Stinks at 50" combo, wow...is that *gorgeous*!!

Friday, November 7, 2014

OPI Fifty is the New Fabulous and CrowsToes Love Stinks

2 comments: