OPI Bond Girls Liquid Sand Collection for Spring/Summer 2013 Swatches and Review

Are you familiar with OPI's Liquid Sand finish?  If not, here's a super-quick summary of it:  It's textured polish.  Think a glitter polish without topcoat, but chunkier.  It has extra grit, like little grains of sand, and it has a bumpy, gritty, sandpaper-ish look once it dries.  Got a basic understanding of it?  Good, now check out the six new Liquid Sand colors (sent for review):

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Honey Ryder.  Light neutral gold metallic shimmer base with gold, silver and champagne glitter. 

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Jinx.  Bright orange-coral jelly base with gritty, bright gold glitter.  Ice/Psychic type.  This is my favorite of the set.  Not only is the coral/gold color combination absolutely gorgeous, it just looks 'right' with the gritty texture. 

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Pussy Galore.  Light, slightly blue-toned pink pearl base with light fuchsia-pink glitter and grit.  I like the way the pink glitter shows up in this polish.  Little glints of reddish-pink darker than the base color. 

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Solitaire.  Very light white-silver pearl base with silver glitter and grit.

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Tiffany Case.  Medium aqua blue shimmer base with blue and silver microglitter, grit, and a tiny amount of larger (but still small) silver glitter.  This is a different shade, texture and opacity level than Get Your Number from the Mariah Carey collection.

OPI Liquid Sand polish in Vesper.  An eggplant purple jelly base with black glitter and white grit.  This one's really interesting.  It looks like a red/dark burgundy creme in the bottle, but not on the nail.  The sand texture is most obvious and dramatic in this polish and the end result is really weird but cool.  It's one of those ugly/pretty polishes that I'm always intrigued by.  In my opinion, this looks horrific with topcoat unless you do three coats of color and another three of topcoat to make it look like a normal polish.

OPI Vesper, one coat.  Can you see the mixture of white and black particles in here?

OPI says that, "OPI Liquid Sand lacquers should always be worn without top coat.", probably because topcoat defeats the purpose of these polishes, but some of them actually look like pretty glitter polishes if you use enough topcoat to smooth out the grit.  I'm only using one coat of topcoat in the pictures below, but they absorb so much topcoat as they dry that you'll likely want two or more coats if you choose to wear them this way.

OPI Honey Ryder with topcoat.

OPI Jinx with topcoat. (ASJKHSFJKH AMAZING)

OPI Pussy Galore with topcoat.

OPI Solitaire with topcoat.

OPI Tiffany Case with topcoat.

OPI Vesper with topcoat.

The formula on these was very good.  They apply evenly with zero effort and they dry very quickly.  I have no complaints about the formula.  All are opaque in two coats and that's what I'm wearing here.  Removal is the same as any glitter polish, but the grit can be rough and scratchy on the nails if you don't let your remover soak on the nail long enough. 

I'm still not in love with the liquid sand texture, but it's growing on me.  I like these colors better than the previous ones.  I'd choose Jinx and Vesper as my picks from the collection just for their beauty and uniqueness. 

These six new shades will be available beginning May 2013 at Professional Salons, including Beauty Brands, Chatters, JCP Salons, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, and ULTA, for $9.00 ($10.95 CAN) suggested retail for each nail lacquer.

(This was sent for review.)