OPI Glam Slam France: Spark de Triomphe and White Shatter

After my vampy-on-the-first-day-of-summer fiasco, I made sure to go for something that screamed summer for my weekend mani.  Summer means sunshine, and what could rival a holo for sunny day mani?  GLITTER!  I dove head first into OPI's French Open Glam Slam duo.  Created with Serena Williams, the France duo contains a sparkly glitter and a brand spankin' new white shatter.  Bring it, summer!

I started with the glitter - Spark de Triomphe.  It's a combination of gold and silver glitter in different shapes and sizes, including small and large hexagonal and round glitter, all suspended in a clear base.  The gold and silver together give an overall color that's somewhere between champagne and pale gold, depending on the light.  It applies pretty easily for a glitter, but unless you want to layer this over another color (Two coats over OPI Glitzerland would be perfect!), you're gonna need at least three coats (shown here) to get this one opaque.  It dries rough and bumpy, as with any glitter, but you can smooth it out with a coat of Gelous or Instant Artificials (both thick, acrylic-based base coats found at Sally's) before your top coat.  Pleeeeease click to enlarge these photos to check this one out up close!

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Ohhhh, you guys, I am in LOVE with this polish!  I'm not a huge glitter girl, but I love everything about this polish, from the name to the color, to the sparkle!  And boy, does it sparkle!  Even in low lighting, it was gorgeous!  My pictures don't even remotely do it justice!  I loved this so much, I wore it alone for three days!

...And then I added White Shatter.  I'm gonna be honest.  I never intended to get the White Shatter.  I really only wanted Spark de Triomphe, so I tried swapping for it.  Turns out my lovely swapper wanted to swap the set, so the shatter found its way home to me.  I loved Spark so much on its own, I was kind of sad and scared to cover it up with the shatter.  The two were meant to go together, so I forced myself to try it out.  One medium-thin coat of shatter later, and here's the result:

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Well.  It's not as bad as I feared it would be, but I just really don't love it.  White Shatter was super easy to work with, it's totally opaque, and I think it looks cool with the glitter poking through the cracks, but Spark de Triomphe is the star in this duo, and it's just too gorgeous to cover up!  It's a good look, but I prefer the glitter all by its sparkly self.  :-)

So, White Shatter gets a pass from me, but Spark de Triomphe is a MUST HAVE.  MUSTTTT HAAAVE!  It's stunning!  Perfect in every way, shape, and form!  This duo was part of OPI's May Glam Slam collection, so you should RUN (don't walk!) to your nearest Ulta to grab it while you can!  I'm telling you guys - it's all that and a bag of chips!  Mmmm...chips....