OPI Sheer Tints

Thursday, April 3, 2014

A few weeks ago my favorite nail supply shop had the new OPI Sheer Tints so I snatched them up. I had envisioned doing some sort of plaid manicure with them and was excited because tints/jellies are among my favorite types of nail polish.

There are only four shades and they named in proper OPI cheesy fashion. Left to right: Don't Violet Me Down, I Can Teal You Like Me, I'm Never Ambaressed, Be Magentale With Me.

These shades are faint enough for them to really be called tints and not jellies. I think of jellies as shades that you can see visible nail line after two or three coats but these are like super diluted watercolors, barely a wash of color for each coat.

The Sheer Tints feature the softer translucent brushes that are used in the OPI base and top coats instead of the usual black Pro Wide brush. Unfortunately for me all my brushes were a bit weird; each one had one or two stray hairs.

The formula, oh where do I even begin? Someone on IG described them as being similar to half dried out Seche Vite and I couldn't agree more. All four colors have a tendency to "string" and are on the thicker side. Even when diluted I found that they bubbled, even when applied with a thin brush for nail art. As I applied coats two and three, they pulled on previous coats and puckered a bit. Really not great formulas. Even after I added some thinner they were still troublesome.

I was going to swatch each one individually like I normal do but since I didn't care for the formula, I was less inclined to take the time to show each shade layered and what not. So on the left side of each of my nails is a white base and the right side is bare nail. The top 1/3 of my nail contains one coat, the second 1/3 has two coats and the last 1/3 (free edge) has three coats. Bam. Done.

Overall, I'm really not keen on this collection purely because of the formula. It would have been really nice to play with these shades (I really did attempt that plaid manicure, but it came out horribly bubbled).

Have you tried any of the OPI Sheer Tints yet? Do you have a favorite jelly polish?

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