Comparison Thursday: OPI Bright Pink Cremes

Today is my blog's birthday!!!!!!!!  Wishes of a Blue-Eyed Girl has turned 2!  I want to express a huge thank you to all of you lovely readers who follow my little blog.  I'm not a funny blogger, and my nails and skin aren't the bestest of the best, but I try hard to be informative so you know exactly what you'll get before you buy!  In honor of this auspicious occasion, I am hosting a giveaway of my favorite polishes!  

There will be twelve winners, and each person will receive one of the "favorites" plus the new Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer Special Edition, Terrific Twos (thanks to Jessica, Sara, and MJ for the help naming it!).  To enter, fill out the prompts in the rafflecopter below.  PLEASE REMEMBER TO ACTUALLY DO THE THINGS YOU SAID YOU'VE DONE!  I do check, and I'd hate for you to be disqualified because you unliked someone or you didn't post something publicly!  If I can't see it, then it doesn't count!  All polishes in this giveaway were purchased by me (except for Maui Wowee which was an extra with my order).  Thank you again to everyone for all of your support!  Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Ok, now we can get back to our regularly scheduled program!  As soon as the Gwen Stefani collection by OPI came out, I wanted to know - how does Hey Baby compare to another popular OPI, Strawberry Margarita?  I didn't own Strawberry Margarita, but people were claiming that it and Hey Baby were exact dupes.  Clearly, that necessisitated me purchasing SM for my weekly comparisons!  So, let's get down to business!

[I purchased both of these myself.]

Because there's not really a whole lot to these polishes, there are really only two similarities between them - the base color and the creme finish.  There aren't that many differences, either, really, so this will be a bit of a shorter post.  However, I wanted to do a comparison of these two anyway because so many people claimed that they were exact duplicates.  I can definitively state that they are not exact duplicates, but they are very close!  Let's get to the differences.  In the bottle, they look almost indistinguishable, but you'll see that isn't the case on the nail.  

Hey Baby

Hey Baby was amazing to apply, and I didn't need much cleanup at all.  The formula was thicker thank SM, which means that it could have been a one coater.  I chose to do two coats, though, to ensure that there weren't any patches or bald spots in my photos.  It is slightly darker in hue than SM.  I didn't use topcoats on either of these because Hey Baby is touted as a "Creme Gloss," and I wanted to see what that meant.  As you can see from my photos, it has the exact same finish as SM, and neither of them are super glossy.  Without using a quick dry topcoat, it did take longer to dry than I'm used to.

Strawberry Margarita

SM is a bit more watery than Hey Baby.  You could still see my nail line with the first coat, and I needed three coats for full opacity.  The consistency could make it a little more prone to flooding my cuticles if I wasn't careful, but it wasn't so bad that I needed to be super careful.  SM is ever so slightly brighter in hue than Hey Baby.  Again, I wore this without topcoat, so dry time was on the long side.  It's also not very glossy without topcoat, so I definitely prefer it with a glossy topcoat.

So, which do you like better?  For me, I fell in love with the application of Hey Baby, which was the overarching factor in my decision to keep it over SM.  Honestly, they aren't exact duplicates, but they are so close in color that you truly don't need both of them.

[I purchased both of these myself.]