OPI: DS Illuminate Swatch

I'm seriously addicted to dusty hunting. I live in NE Ohio so there's a nail salon like every twenty feet. We don't have a lot going on around these parts, you know? I ran a few errands the other day and in between doing things I needed to do I would stop at every salon along the way. Lots of places don't sell their polish which can be a bummer, especially when one employee says "sure, go ahead and look" and I find something awesome and then the owner, I presume, says "only for customers!". I'm technically a customer, right? I mean, clearly nobody has gotten their nails done with that color in at least three hundred years... just sell it to meeeeee.

So that's almost what happened with DS Illuminate, here. I walked in and seriously the whole wall of this place was just filled with every brand of nail polish you can think of. Of course I was told that the polishes weren't for sale. I thanked her and started to walk out. "Well, I do have just a few polishes I could sell, since they're doubles of ones I already have". Fair enough!

DS Illuminate immediately caught my eye. I knew it wasn't from the older series because of the scattered holographic-ness, but I thought it was beautiful all the same. She had a couple other OPI and a China Glaze that I didn't love but am considering going back for now that I've looked at them swatched. Anyway, here ya'll!

Do you like my fancy nail polish display stage?

DS Illuminate is a burnt umber shade with copper-shining flecks and tiny holographic glitter and oh, also, it shimmers green. It looks likes if a bunch of sand got sunburned, took a refreshing shower in a rainbow waterfall and then, um, put on moisturizer made from the tears of mermaids.

The little triangle friends are SP Robin's Egg. I use that color a lot I guess

This is in the tiny amount of sunlight I was given before this big, stupid cloud came and made it all shady for about nine millennia. Sunny all morning. Go to swatch. Big stupid cloud. But anyway, does it not look like I dipped my fingertips in the melted skin of a bronze god?

In the shade

Note the bit of nail sticking out over my finger in the top right corner! Growth!

And the culprit. Look how stupid it is.

So that's that. I'm not even calling this a review because it's, you know, not one. Basically I'm just raving about how pretty this polish is. This is the first manicure I've done in months that I've kept for more than -a- day.