I recently acquired a bottle of OPI- Creme de Menthe. This is the unicorn pee of OPI. Creme de Menthe was released as part of the mysterious, elusive "X collection" sometime during the 80s. Back then, edgy shades such as this weren't as easy to come by. This polish is nearly 30 years old and it is in pristine condition!
Being the obsessive compulsive nail polish collector/hoarder that I am, I did not want to use this polish let alone open it to take a whiff. I used two polishes that I already had and layered them in order to created a look-a-like so that I wouldn't have to use Creme de Menthe. This was inspired by a post I've seen on The Collegiate Nail.
It's pretty close to the original! I held the bottle of Creme de Menthe for pictures in order to compare how close the layering combination was. Creme de Menthe is a medium bright green with golden shimmer. So.. how did I achieve this look?
As a base color, I used Funky Fingers- Mrs. Mint. I picked this one up at Five Below, where Funky Fingers are sold 3 for $5. Although it is difficult to see in the picture, Mrs. Mint has a subtle hint of shimmer. The formula was a bit thin, so I needed three coats of this in order to hide brushstrokes. This was taken indoors without the flash.
Mrs. Mint with the flash.
I then layered one coat of OPI- Sit Under the Apple Tree over Mrs. Mint. It had the perfect amount of yellow/golden shimmer. Sit Under the Apple Tree is from OPI's Retro Fun in the Sun collection from Summer 2008. I was able to find this one in the clearance bin at Ulta fairly recently.
Here's a picture I took in the car. This looks super-bright, almost neon!
I've accumulated TONS and TONS of new polish, so I may have to do a haul post soon! Stay tuned :)
I swear I found 2 bottles in a salon the other day. But neither had labels. :(
ReplyDeleteYou did great on creating a look-a-like. I am lots older than most polish blog Fowler and was in my late 30's when OPI came on the market. I was already a big polish hound at the time...I had the must have acrylic nails in the 80's and wore China Glaze and mostly CND that was called Creative Nail Design then and Creative for short not CND as it is now - those were a couple of the top salon brands....then OPI came out - it hit pretty big pretty fast. I did have the entire early collections always...this one called X collection never had a collection name - the early ones were not named...they came out 3 some 4 times a year as seasonal releases. I purged the entire 'odd' shades maybe 6 yrs after I got them because they just were so odd...the neighbor teen got them and thought they were pretty interesting. I went back to wearing more normal colors...I can recall the first duochrome I saw an bought but though it was pretty odd - I think it was Pluto Purple but really not positive now - I kept it for a long time because it looked so unusual - it really was a multichrome and has been recreated in form by a # of companies - it was a purple with green/gold shift. I really did not realize how collectable my OPIs were for a long time...finally caught on about 2005 that I really needed to hang on to them and just see what happened. I still have many from the early 90's and 2 from 89. I recall well when the collections started to come out with names. Also early on it was often very hard to tell a shimmer from a frost in some of them - you had to look on the flyer literature that was with each collection where sold and look for the (S) or the (F) and I was sooo not wanting frost I was nuts over looking so careful at these so I never brought home an F...I had lived through the wearing nothing but white and pink and a few light peach frosted polishes in the 60's and that did me in. I still don't like frosts today! Wish I had know the internet was going to be what it is today in 1993 when I finally sold my entire original and on through 1964 Barbie 'stuff' - I had everything - the first car - the first paper fold up house and some spin off companies who made Barbie's first canopy bed. Knew Barbies were collector's items but all we had to go on were some published hard copy books with market prices and photos of all the old Barbie stuff through the years. I think I sold it all for around $700 - some of the stuff goes today for $500 just for a gold compact that was an accessories with a tiny pink power-puff that came out among the first groups of original Barbie outfits. Live and learn! Ya cannot save everything.
ReplyDeleteHi there! do you by any chance have any more of those OPIs that you would be willing to sell?
Deletegreat look a like! :)
ReplyDeleteOkay so I read this last night and then unconsciously did something similarly making a nail polish that ended up being a sheer green shimmer and putting it over mint... The mind is strange
ReplyDeleteHi there! do you still have these polishes, and would you be willing to sell them?
ReplyDeleteThank you!