REVIEW of O.P.I.'s Just Spotted the Lizard and Zoya's Loredana with SWATCHES

So..I've gotten into some pretty bad habits lately when it comes to doing my nails. One is generally not having the patience for it after treating myself to the nail salon quite a few times during the stressful exam period I just got through. Fingers crossed everything worked out alright. Another is indecisiveness when it comes to color selection. And a third is only finishing the paint job on one hand because of reasons 1 and 2. Oh, and I also need to get a bottle of Seche Restore because my Seche Vite is actively ruining my swatches now. Any imperfections you might notice in the swatches of O.P.I.'s Just Spotted the Lizard (nails 2 and 4 from left to right) are from my Seche Vite top coat. Obviously, I didn't use top coat on nails 1 and 3 because they were painted with Loredana, which is one of Zoya's Matte Velvet polishes and a shiny top coat would ruin the effect.

Now that we're through with that, I'll get into the actual review. O.P.I.'s Just Spotted the Lizard is the only color I really liked from their Spiderman collection and is widely accepted as a Chanel Peridot dupe. I bought my bottle at Ricky's in NYC. I ordered Loredana in a recent haul from Zoya and it's one of their previously released matte velvet nail polishes. I found both polishes surprisingly easy to work with. I haven't worked with a matte polish or a duochrome before and I thought they might be too glittery or foil-like but they went on incredibly smoothly. They were both pretty opaque in 3 coats though not so much before that. The only thing that upset me was that originally all my nails were painted with Loredana but even after a ridiculously long drying time, my nails were not completely dry and they smudged so I cleaned the off and painted on O.P.I.'s Just Spotted the Lizard instead. I ended up loving the effect since it kind of reminded me of concrete which worked nicely with the Spiderman theme (seeing as Peter Parker lives in NY).

Both colors were absolutely gorgeous. Loredana has definitely sold me on the matte velvet effect. It just has such an interesting look and feel, like your natural nails but smoother instead of that plasticky feeling you can get with creme polishes and shiny topcoats. The polish is kind of made up of little flecks of color which gives it an amazing amount of depth and dimension. O.P.I.'s Just Spotted The Lizard is a stunner. At certain angles, it can be a bit blinding but it's worth it. It is so reflective your nails can actually reflect colored light onto each other. The color is always a bunch of different colors simultaneously but the main ones are a bronze-y gold, a lizard-like green, and a yellow green. I definitely recommend both for the color and formula.

SWATCHES...