OPI Lights of Emerald City - Swatches #2

When I swatched Lights of Emerald City recently, I wore it over mid / dark base colours (my earlier post on this polish) but I've been intrigued how it would look over a pale base, especially what would happen to the smaller, iridescent glitters (which are the stars of the polish, in my opinion).

There are a few swatches around over pinks and nudes, and I love greens...........so here we go:

OPI Lights of Emerald City

For my base I used M&S Limited Collection Polish in Mint - this is a green so pale it's hardly green at all. I'd describe it as the colour of apple flesh, rather than mint, but it's lovely all the same. It's a bit like a green- toned version of Illamasqua Load!

M&S Limited Collection Polish in Mint 

This is three coats, with a coat of Seche Vite between the second and third coats to even out any streaking. I love pale creams, but a lot of them do tend to streak, so I always do this 'SV sandwich' as a precaution.

Then I added just one coat of OPI Lights of Emerald City

OPI LIghts of Emerald City

Depending on the light, the iridescent glitters show either red or blue - the blue wasn't happening over my darker bases at all. I rather like the delicate effects here!

And finally, just for a bit of fun, I thought I'd see how Lights of Emerald City works in a jelly sandwich. I've seen a couple of swatches of Lights of Emerald City in a sandwich with Glints of Glinda, a dirty pale tan jelly from the OPI Oz collection - but that colour is SO not me I can't really judge whether I like the effect or not! I chose to layer Zuma Beach from the American Apparel Sheer range over the combination above, and the effect is really interesting!

OPI LIghts of Emerald City with American Apparel Zuma Beach

The jelly smooths out the large white square glitters and somehow integrates them into the whole mani much better. You do lose a lot of the sparkle in the iridescent glitters, but not all of it.

So I'm concluding that OPI Lights of Emerald City is quite a versatile polish really!

I purchased M&S Limited Collection Polish in Mint from my local M&S, and OPI Lights of Emerald City from a seller on amazon.co.uk. The American Apparel sheer polish was a gift from a polish buddy in the USA.