OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, 2 coats plus top coat

We are almost halfway through my series on my picks from OPI’s Scotland collection! I think I may need to ramp up my posting to twice a week next month if I want to finish it off before Christmas month, aka December. Today we are looking at Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k. For the first time in this series and possibly on my blog ever, all swatch photos were taken in natural lighting! I didn’t realize that just by sitting on my couch I could take great nail photos until the weekend I wore this one. I will try to do that more with weekend swatches, light boxes just are not the same. Before we get into the polish, there is something that needs to be addressed: why did they use “sea” as a pun? Nessie is supposed to be in a lake. The name would have been totally cute and fine if they had just called it “Nessie Plays Hide & Seek” but then they had to get all inaccurate about a mythical being’s habitat. smh.

Today’s swatches were all done over a-england’s The Ridgeway base coat and topped with SuperChic Lacquer’s Marvel Liquid Macro top coat where noted.

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, 1 coat

Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k is much more opaque in just one coat than I expected. It does have a jelly base, presumably to show off all those little gold shimmery flake things, but it actually applied really evenly and I only have a few light spots. I did not find the formula to be runny; usually when a base is packed with stuff, application is a breeze.

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, 2 coats

Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k is definitely opaque in two coats. The base darkens up a bit and the base color is consistent. I also felt like it matched what I was seeing in the bottle pretty well so I did not do another coat and try to darken the base color.

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, 2 coats plus top coat under direct lighting

The shimmer stands out really well, but not on camera apparently. You can tell it’s gold, the blue base does not drown it out and make it look green.

Left to Right: China Glaze Blue-Ya!, OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, Zoya Remy

When I first saw this polish in person, I immediately thought of three polishes in my collection that I was pretty sure were the exact same. I’m showing you two here and, to be honest, they are not the same but are definitely all subtle variations on the same theme. Blue-Ya! and Remy have darker base colors (I did three coats of Nessie here just to make sure). The shimmer flakies in both also look a little bit bigger than the ones in Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k. Remy has more densely packed shimmer than Blue-Ya! and Nessie. You probably don’t need them all, but since Remy is one of my all-time favorites obviously I need everything that even slightly resembles it. I also have Sinful Colors Nice Guise, but I figured you all would be more likely to have the China Glaze and/or Zoya.

The cute little town of Inverness, as seen from the bank of the River Ness. The river’s source is Loch Ness (see previous post) which is where Nessie lives. Not in the sea.

I’m pretty satisfied with the fact that this polish, to my eyes, stands out from the other dark-blue-base-with-gold-flakie polishes that I own. The formula was also impressive, I thought for sure it was going to need three coats. Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k is a gorgeous polish, and if you do not have any of the other three I mentioned you definitely need to get your hands on this one. Or not. Whatever floats your boat!

Is there a polish color/type that you have many of?

xx, Ashley

OPI is not cruelty-free. I bought my bottle from polishpick.com.

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