So when I popped into town the other day, one of the shops I really wanted to go into was The Original Factory Shop, I had received one of those little leaflets through the letterbox saying that they were selling OPI’s at 3 for £10. Yes, in lots of these discount shops, the polishes they sell are normally separated quite badly and not much choice but for such a bargain it is always worth having a look. And I was really chuffed to find 3 polishes that I not only loved the look of but weren’t separated at all.
Cream in my Coffee was the first one I grabbed. Its a gorgeous milky coffee/tea coloured nude. It’s quite sheer and finishes really shiny. I think this is a beautiful polish and is a fab alternative to white during the Autumnal months.
Photo shows 3 coats with no topcoat.
Pearl Diver is a beautiful, sheer, pearlescent polish. It was difficult to capture in the photos, although you can see a hint of it in the bottle, but it has a really pretty subtle green shimmer in certain lights.
Photo shows 1 coat of Pearl Diver over Cream in my Coffee with no topcoat.
Vampsterdam was the final polish I picked up. I wasn”t sure about it, I have a lot of purples, especially dark purples in my collection but I’m glad I picked it up. It is a very deep purple with a frosty shimmer throughout. It finished with a perfect shine and looks really gothic.
Photo shows 2 coats with no topcoat.
Now although I adore all of these polishes that I purchased, I started to get a little suspicious of them (or at least 2 of them) whilst I was sorting the photos for this post.
I know there are many a posts out there on how to spot a fake OPI (one such is this one on Nailed Blog) and I just never paid attention to them tbh, I’m one of those ‘out of sight, out of mind’ type of people, so if I don’t know it’s a fake, then it isn’t a fake.
But when I searched for other places to buy Cream in my Coffee and the only posts that came up were other people realising/asking if the polish was fake because it didn’t exist anywhere, it made me wonder, so I started looking into it a bit more.
Ok, so the first thing I noticed was the stickers on the bottom, although they all had the ‘Peel Here’ bit and a second sticker underneath, only Vampsterdam had the barcode on it.
Next thing was that Cream in my Coffee and Pearl Diver have the same warning labels on the back as each other but they are both different to the ones on Vampsterdam. Also, only Vamspterdam had a number anywhere on the sides of the bottle.
Third thing, even though all 3 had the dot in the middle of the P on the bottle lid, the texture on the Vampsterdam lid was completely different to the other two, in fact, the Vampsterdam lid was pretty much smooth.
Everything else seemed normal, I compared them to my other OPI’s that are definitely genuine and even they all differed to each other. So I really don’t know if I bought fakes or not.
If anyone can shine any further light on this it would be much appreciated, because even though I love all the polishes, I don’t like the feeling that I may have been tricked into buying fake products.
:)x
