For me, these 12 polishes fall into three categories. First there are the “classics,” reds and pinks that anyone can wear (and they make great colors for toes, too).

All of the “classics” have tiny, deep-set shimmers. The shimmer is visible in sunlight; less so indoors. Are We There Yet? is coral-pink/peach-pink with tiny gold and pink sparkles. I Eat Mainely Lobster (which is really not lobster-colored at all) is warm hot pink with pink and gold sparkles. Color to Diner For is cranberry red with dense fuchsia and gold sparkles (it’s the sparkliest of the group). My Address is “Hollywood” is a rose pink with pink and gold sparkles.

I also swatched these on my nails.

And I wanted to give you a second look at Are We There Yet? and I Eat Mainely Lobster. They’re both bright, so they can look similar in a picture. Hopefully this photo better shows the differences between them. Are We There Yet? is definitely peachier; I Eat Mainely Lobster is more pink. (Click the photo to view at full size.)

The next group is what I’ll call the “avant garde” shades. As polish has grown more and more popular in recent years (and addicts need a new thrill for their nails), we’ve seen a lasting trend for edgy neutrals.

A-Taupe is a Particuliere-esque chocolate taupe (I can never resist any iteration of this shade). Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window (oy! What a visual!) is a very muted, swampy army green. Suzi Takes the Wheel is an industrial, concrete blue-grey (though it looks almost green next to French Quarter). French Quarter for Your Thoughts is a warmer, softer, foggy, kitten, purpled grey. These shades are all cremes.

Here are your on-nail swatches:

And I thought you might need a closer look at the difference between Suzi Takes the Wheel and French Quarter for Your Thoughts (click to view at full size):

The final group is the “vamps,” your typical deep fall/winter shades.

Get in the Expresso Lane is a very dark cool brown (and I feel compelled to mention that espresso the drink is spelled with an S, not an X). I Brake for Manicures is a dark, muted, dusty plum (even dustier, I think, than Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Recherche). Honk If You Love OPI is a deep, rich plum purple — more red than I Brake for Manicures. (And in one coat, Honk is more sheer than the others, but it builds just fine). Roadhouse Blues is a deep, perfect blue-purple (blurple). I actually thought the vamps swatched even darker than they look in the bottle.

And I did these on-nail, too:

I was super excited about Roadhouse Blues, because for ages, I have wanted an OPI polish called Madewell to Order. It was a limited edition shade, (created with clothing brand Madewell) the exact blue-purple of their logo. I will probably never find it. Roadhouse Blues looks a little darker and maybe bluer than Madewell, but I think it will satisfy my long-held desire.

OPI polishes are $8.50 each. These polishes were provided by OPI for swatching purposes.

But when I saw the collection in person, I couldn’t make the connection between the color palette and my home state. Am I being too literal? I’d love to hear your reaction to “OPI Texas.”

The collection is presented in two parts. Six shades are what OPI is calling a “sorbet” finish. They’re sheer, jelly polishes in bright, happy summer colors. Here are two-coat swatches:

Here are four-coat swatches:

I like these, even if they don’t make me think “Texas.” Not only are the colors bright and juicy and happy, but their sheerness provides a wealth of application possibilities. You could layer them over one another, or over regular polishes. You can use them for gradient manicures. You can apply them over white or nude to avoid Visible Nail Line. You could wear them over black or another dark shade for a vampy variation.

Houston We Have a Purple is violet-plum. Do You Think I’m Tex-y? is berry pink. Too Hot Pink to Hold ‘Em is hot raspberry. Guy Meets Gal-veston is hot strawberry (more coral and pink than red). Big Hair… Big Nails is red-orange coral. Y’all Come Back Ya Hear? is bright orange. Of course, the final line of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song is: “Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

I found the non-sorbet half of the Texas collection harder to love. The colors seem… off season.

Suzi Loves Cowboys is dark, cool brown creme. Football fans, I SO wanted this color to be Dallas Cowboys blue.

Don’t Mess with OPI is a blued green creme. One of my favorite things to do when I’m visiting other states is ask people what they think “Don’t Mess with Texas,” means. The answers are hilarious, and often along the lines of “if you find someone in bed with your wife, you’re allowed to shoot him.”

Don’t Mess with Texas is a 25-year-old anti-littering campaign by the Department of Transportation. It calls upon Texans’ state pride to persuade them not to throw trash out of car windows.

It’s Totally Fort Worth It is a dishwater grey-purple silver with tiny pink sparkles. I’d worry about brush strokes with this one.

San Tan-tonio is a greyed tan.

Austin-tatious Turquoise makes the most sense to me. It’s a sheer teal turquoise with tons of micro glitter. The polish itself is somewhat sheer, which means the sparkle takes on this multi-chromatic depth as you layer it. Austin is the funky-cool, college-vibe, hippy-ish, free-chips-and-salsa-with-everything, live-music-capital, vintage-clothing, used-record-store center of Texas, and this color could be the paint on an old Camaro, or the glitter-vinyl booth seat of Elvis-obsessed Chuy’s restaurant.

I Want to Be a Lone Star is a white-blue/pale blue satin finish.

OPI polishes are $8.50 each; you can find the Texas collection at your local Ulta.

OPI’s recent collaboration with Katy Perry produced four polishes: The One that Got Away, Teenage Dream, Last Friday Night, and Not Like the Movies. Black Shatter was released simultaneously (overlapping the Katy Perry and Serena Williams Glam Slam collections). And I thought Black Shatter wasn’t going to be a must-have. As it turns out, I love it, and it is flying off shelves everywhere!

I prefer Black Shatter over the Katy Perry glitters, Teenage Dream and Last Friday Night. They provide more contrast than The One that Got Away (a gorgeous polish on its own).

I haven’t tried Black Shatter over Not Like the Movies, but I don’t think there will be enough contrast to get the full effect of Black Shatter.

In these swatches, I applied four coats of the glitters, and one coat of Black Shatter. For The One that Got Away, I did three coats and one coat of Black Shatter.  I also used two coats of Sally Hansen Insta Dri Anti-Chip top coat (red bottle).

Everything applied very nicely and the wear was excellent. I wore each manicure three days and there was no tip wear or chipping. Since Teenage Dream and Last Friday Night are glitters and I applied four coats, they were a bit difficult to remove (even with the Studio Tools 100% acetone remover tub). But in my mind, totally worth it!

The One That Got Away is a gorgeous green/purple duochrome polish with silver microglitter. I’ll try to have swatches of that one soon.

OPI polishes retail for $8.50 each and are available at Ulta and other retailers, as well as etailers.

Here’s Soaper1′s review of OPI Black Shatter. Click here to go back to her review of the Sally Hansen Effects.

After successfully applying Sally Hansen Effects to one nail, I suddenly remembered that my OPI Black Shatter was due to arrive the next day — and I knew I would want to wear it right away.

I didn’t want to finish the manicure with the Salon Effects and waste them by taking them off the next day. So, I did a coordinating polish, OPI What’s with the Cattitude. I applied three coats of What’s with the Cattitude with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta Dri anti-chip top coat (red bottle).

This is one coat of Black Shatter topped with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta Dri anti-chip top coat. The thickness of the coat determines how it shatters — the thicker the coat, the wider the “shatter.” My ring finger was a thin coat, middle finger a medium coat and index finger a thick coat.

If you’re interested in OPI Black Shatter, you should get it now; it is extremely popular and selling out quickly. It’s available at Ulta (as well as various other retailers and etailers), and like all OPI polishes, it retails for $8.50. If you do miss out, don’t worry too much: China Glaze is coming out soon with a six-piece Crackle Glaze collection.

OPI Brisbane Bronze is a shimmery, metallic rose. I’ve picked up this polish dozens of times at various retailers, and I’ve always put it back down. Something about it intrigues me, but it’s just not my kind of color. OPI recently offered a free set of three minis with purchase — and one of those shades was Brisbane Bronze — so I thought I’d give it a try.

The shade applied nicely and doesn’t look frosty on the nail (though it’s frosty-looking in the bottle). This is three coats with one coat of Poshe. It wore well, but I think my first instinct was correct: this isn’t the color for me.

Kiss Me at Midnight is a sophisticated brown-burgundy shimmer. Stuck In the Chimney is a rose red with gold shimmer. The gold shimmer is really subtle; it just gives the polish a kind of richness. Until I saw Stuck In the Chimney, I had nearly forgotten — my mom used to mix her own red + gold fall/winter polish, and women would stop her on the street to ask what it was. Stuck In the Chimney is very close to that shade.

Spark My Mistletoe is pretty sassy. It’s clear with lots of tiny red sparkles, some tiny holographic silver sparkles, and a few larger pieces of holo silver hexagonal glitter. The glitter mix isn’t super-dense, so you’ll want to use it on top of another polish. It looks great on both Stuck In the Chimney and Kiss Me at Midnight — but I’m sure it would be great on any red or black… or dark green, or maroon, or plum.

Bring On the Tinsel is a delight, chock-full of small blue-green, red, and silver glitter. I like that it’s not inherently Christmassy — I feel like you could wear it year-round. You might be able to get full coverage in 3 or 4 coats, but you probably want to wear this one over something too.

Nicole polishes are regularly $8 each, and I really loved the whole collection.  If you love them, too, remember that there are three sets for sale in the BeautyBloggers.org charity auction, which ends Monday, December 20!

She says Vodka & Caviar has a slightly jelly finish; she painted three coats, with one coat of Poshe topcoat.

My kids love holiday manicures, and one of my daughters especially likes glow-in-the-dark polishes. The blue manicure is OPI Boo Berry (glows in the dark) layered over OPI What’s with the Cattitude? (previously swatched here). There’s more “glow” a bit more than the picture shows.

Anyway, to possibly save you, dear reader, from finding yourself in the same boat, I thought I should publish a comparison.

OPI’s Glitzerland (from their fall Swiss collection) is a fine, shimmering, golden veil. Like tulle. It has tiny silver sparkles.

Nina’s Velveteen Rabbit is the most opaque in one coat… I also believe it’s identical to Claire’s 14 Karats. This shade is a brown gold, or a golden brown — it’s the one most like a real haircolor. It has silver sparkles.

Sally Hansen’s Gilty Pleasure is perhaps the smoothest. It’s also the most golden — it contains tiny sparkles, but they’re yellow/gold instead of silver.

BB Couture’s Blind Love is the coolest — it looks almost silver lined up with the others. It’s a cool gold, a silvered wheat.

CoverGirl’s Bronze Beauty is a little more brown than the others (but not so bronze that it didn’t deserve to join the lineup). It’s got both gold and silver sparkles.

Clearly I need to employ a little more self-restraint in the drugstore; not give in to the impulse purchase quite so often… Is there any category of makeup you find yourself “repeat buying”?

The results weren’t exactly what I expected.

Both polishes are too opaque to let the bottom color really show through; whichever one you paint on top dominates the manicure.

They also have different finishes. Glitzerland is a fine golden veil without distinct sparkles; Lucerne-tainly is sparkly, cool, dark silver. Here’s Glitzerland over Lucerne-tainly (I think I reinvented Cover Girl’s Bronze Beauty).

Lucerne-tainly on top of Glitzerland is not substantially different from Lucerne-tainly alone.

Glitzerland and Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous are both from OPI’s fall Swiss collection. OPI polishes are $8.50 each.