‘Ni hao!’ – I say –
but
‘Suzi Says Feng Shui‘!
I’m not having an awkward time talking with ‘a Suzi’ but an O.P.I. nail polish and its famous love for puns as funny names for all of its products…

O.P.I. Suzi Says Feng Shui: the product

O.P.I. Suzi Says Feng Shui was launched with the release of the Spring 2010 Hong Kong collection…

inspired by magical Southeastern Asia, where modern neon-blasting cities fuse with a thousand-year culture. This limited collection saw pastel crème lacquers and precious metallics.

Finish & Colour
O.P.I. Suzi Says Feng Shui is an intense shade of blue with a crème and mildly glossy finish. It would seem so easy to describe but it’s not. So I made use of my Zanichelli colour atlas to find a fitting description for the peace of all. The O.P.I. Italian website labels this nail polish as a pastel turquoise, some bloggers depict it as a cobalt blue. In my humble opinion, O.P.I. Suzi Says Feng Shui is a very dark nuance of cobalt, which turns peacock blue at the sunlight. No matter how you see it, Suzi Says Feng Shui is a very peculiar and rich shade of medium-to-dark blue.

Texture
This O.P.I. nail polish is relatively recent and features a renew formula and a new brush applicator. If compared with O.P.I. Marquis d’Mauve and older pieces, its texture looks denser, and its ‘pro wide brush’ makes for a great application resulting in a very smooth finish.


The best quality found in Suzi Says Feng Shui is its fast drying time, around 2 to 3 minutes. Its pigmentation is intese, with an optimal coverage achievable with two thin coats. Without top coat and base coat, this nail polish can last up to 4 days, but a protective base is needed, due to the infamous tendency of any blue nail polish to stain your natural nails.

This review wants to be pretty different with plenty of imagination…
An unusual nail polish like O.P.I. Suzy Says Feng Shui can be customised – if one gets bored of it – with daily-life stuff like pencils and tapes! Two nail polishes are enough to create a nice variety of manicures. I recommend picking up two contrasting but balanced nail lacquers (check my Colour Guide here), even two shades from the same spectrum, may do the work well. If blue, for example, your choices must have a different finish. Here, I paired a crème nail polish (O.P.I. Suzy Says Feng Shui) with a metallic (O.P.I. Teal The Cows Come Home), and I used masking tapes and toothpicks.
The first manicure is a basic one: I applied one coat of O.P.I. Suzy Says Feng Shui and layered it with one of O.P.I. Teal The Cows Come Home for a tridimentional intensity. This trick works well with sheer and sparkly nail polishes as toppers.

From the left to the right, and with Suzi Says Feng Shui as my base colour: diagonal stripes – inspired by candy canes and barber shops’ signs – a French manicure, a gradient nail, and a chevron French.

If stripes are not for you, yet a Frech manicure is too classic, opt for a reverse French like the ‘moon nails’. Gradient nails need an ordinary latex sponge, while chevrons and stripes require toenails French manicure guides or – as cheap alternatives – some other kind of straight tapes like masking or washi tape. Once you’re happy with the stripes placement and applied your topper, remove the stickers and allow to dry before sealing everything with a glossy top coat.

Pois are easy too and without dotting tools; in theory, everything with a rounded end can be employed as a pro tool: a pencil, a toothpick, even a bobby pin. To get dots on point, stay comfy and steady with your elbow on your desk and avoid pressing your DIY dotting tool. Where and how many pois are up to you…

Clearly, I had time to waste and too many mental energy to use,  so I snapped some extra pictures…


Peekaboo…

O.P.I. quality: Before & After, and consideration

O.P.I. has developed its products and it’s paying more attention on its formulations and brushes: from ‘Marquis d’Mauve’ – passing by ‘Teal The Cows Come Home’ – to finally ‘Suzi Says Feng Shu’, I can see an evolution and some kind of improvements. The se nail lacquers, the newer they are, the faster they dry and the more effortless they apply. Today, the smell is less strong and the brushes, now shorter and slightly larger, allow better control and application. But there’s something to pay for the infinite array of colours, good quality and quirky names of your O.P.I. nail polish: the price, of course!