The Fabulous Life of Mrs. P: Mani Monday: Rainbow Honey and OPI

L to R: China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier (strengthener/base), Rainbow Honey Spirit of Wonder, OPI DS Magic, OPI Gone Gonzo, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat

Hello all! So I have another mani Monday for you. I know it's Tuesday but I did this mani on Monday and with two small boys and the husband home right now it's difficult for me to get a mani and a blog post in all in the same day LOL. The end result of this mani is not what I originally had in mind but I do love it in the end. I started off with my usual and go to strengthening treatment as my base (China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier). If you know my history with this treatment at all you know I cannot praise it enough. It's pretty much the only strengthening treatment I've used since I removed my gel nails and decided to go with my natural nails. It took my nails from really flimsy, thin and splitting to much thicker, super strong and no splits. I like it for any sort of manis where I do just the tips of my nails and leave the base bare as the subtle pink color of it evens out any yellowing and marks that my nail beds may have.

I originally planned to use only two polishes. The first being one of my newest Rainbow Honey polishes from the 2012 Holiday Collection. Ever since buying the Equestria Collection from Rainbow Honey probably about 6 or so months ago (were the first Rainbow Honey polishes I ever purchased) I have been hooked and obsessed and super duper uber impressed with everything about Rainbow Honey. For an indie brand the packaging is amazeballs!!! There always extra pamphlet info on other collections and the labelling and boxes that each polish comes in are phenomenal. So much attention to detail! And once you get past the packaging and to the polish itself you'll feel like you've died and gone to heaven!! I can't get enough Rainbow Honey and the fact that they constantly send emails with pre-order opportunities and discount coupons just makes it even better and feeds my addiction something fierce LOL. Anyway, I digress...

This is Spirit of Wonder from the Holiday 2012 collection. Spirit of Wonder is described as "A bright winter white with hidden blue shimmer and a dusting of snow; a mix of blue and silver holographic glitters make this polish a joy to wear." I had originally planned for this polish to be the star of my mani.

The formula was great and fairly easy to work with. I always find the mini bottles a little bit more difficult to work with as the brush is smaller and not as much polish gets loaded on the brush so sometimes you have to go back for another dip in the polish before you have a full coat on the nail. But even then the formula of Rainbow Honey has never been a disappointment. I found it was best to do thinner coats as the thicker coats tended to get drag marks with more brush strokes and sometimes you need an extra brush stroke or two to disburse the glitter super even over the nail. But with that being said there was no fishing for glitter necessary.

I then planned to use one of my all time favourite polishes on a couple of accent nails. This would be OPI DS Magic from the Designer Series. I first fell in love with this polish in December of 2011. I was on my "Honeymoon" (I use quotations because we brought our then 2 year old son Daniel with us so I suppose it wasn't a true honeymoon but I don't regret having the family time at all. It was our first vacation as an official family) in Banff, Alberta, Canada at the Rimrock Resort Hotel. I went for a pedicure at the spa in the hotel (best pedicure of my life!!!!!!) and the lady used DS Magic as my polish and I was hooked. It took me a while to acquire it myself for my personal stash but I finally got it all for myself a few months ago and I've been dying to use it.

Formula and application were awesome and just what you would expect from a high end polish and a special collection. The brush was a nice wider flat brush which made application a breeze. Dry time was very minimal in between coats and the colour is so stunning! See for yourself.

It's a deep, rich sapphire blue jelly base loaded with blue and purple micro shimmer. It's mesmerizing and magical and what's not to love?!?!

I ended up deviating from my original plan in that I added a third polish to kind of make the above two polishes read better together. When I originally had Spirit of Wonder as the main polish and DS Magic as the accent nails (ring finger and thumb) it was like there was too much contrast between the white and the deep, rich blue. I wanted to use a blue polish on my accent nails to pick up the blue glitter in Spirit of Wonder, however DS Magic totally took over even though it was only a couple of nails. The deep colour and super shine and shimmer just outshone the matte white of Spirit of Wonder so I needed something to bring a little more pizazz to the white to counteract DS Magic and downplay the deep tone of DS Magic a little bit so there was not as much contrast between the two polishes.

For that I turned to another favourite polish of mine, OPI Gone Gonzo from the Muppets Collection. As with DS Magic I first fell in love with this colour on my "Honeymoon" during a pedi at the hotel spa where the lady placed a thin coat of Gone Gonzo over DS Magic. It was like a magical match made in heaven! I actually came home from my "Honeymoon" and went straight out and purchased Gone Gonzo for my own personal collection. I've used it a decent amount over the last couple years as you can see from the fill line in the pics below.

Formula is exactly what you would expect from OPI. It's a fabulous glitter that gets easy and even coverage with little effort. It's a clear base full of bright blue glitter and silver hexes.

So after all this talk of polish are you ready to see the results?

I started off with 3 thinner coats of Rainbow Honey Spirit of Wonder on my index, middle and pinky fingers. Within 3 coats I had full opacity. I probably could have gotten full opacity with 2 thicker coats but I found that I had a problem with dragging and balding if I used thicker coats.

And 2 coats of OPI DS Magic on my thumb and ring finger.

look at the blue/purple shimmer in that bottle, how can you resist that?!

I then added a thin coat of OPI Gone Gonzo over top of all nails except my middle finger leaving just the Spirit of Wonder on the middle finger.

Here's a look at just the three different nails. Again, the dark nail is 2 coats of DS Magic with 1 thin coat of Gone Gonzo over top, middle finger is 3 coats of Spirit of Wonder, and white and blue nail is 3 coats of Spirit of Wonder with 1 thin coat of Gone Gonzo over top.

I topped everything off with 2 thinner coats of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. The only reason I used 2 coats rather than 1 was to make sure all the glitter was smoothed out and not bumpy in the end.

I'm loving how this turned out in the end. It almost reads like an ombre mani with the differing shades of blues. And it's super glittery and who doesn't love that?!?! :)

Talking about my "Honeymoon" above made me all nostalgic and I thought I would reminisce and share a few of my photos from our time in Banff.

our maid made a house of towels for Daniel's stuffed puppy while we were out

going up Sulfur Mountain on the gondola

Me, Daniel and Dorian in the gondola

Me and Daniel in the cafeteria at the top of Sulfur Mountain

Me and Dorian in the cafeteria at the top of Sulfur Mountain

Daniel standing in the giant gingerbread house in the lobby of the hotel. It was actually made out of real gingerbread and icing and candies etc. and had a "flower box" under the window with flowers made of candy canes.