Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Happy New Year!  Favorite bubbly and favorite gold polish! My traditional New Year's Eve mani is OPI's Glitzerland.  It's my very favorite gold polish of all time and I love it like puppies. OPI started their Liquid Sand line this year, and in their Bond Girls collection, they released Honey Ryder, which is dead on for Glitzerland-as-a-Sand, so I thought I would switch it up for a change. In the shade/sun I love the multidimensional look of Sands, but I hate the actual texture, so I Gelous the hell out of them to keep them smooth and shiny, but it still keeps the textured look. In indirect sunlight Sorry about the blur, but my camera went bonkers in the sun!  My nails also look freakishly long at this angle. FLASH! I love it.  I will probably not wear it for much more than NYE festivities, I'm just not into many golds, but I do like it. I hope everyone has a fantastic 2014! -S

Ninja Polish started out as a US-based stockist for international polish brands, but when she started offering her own concoctions, WOW.  Today, I have Color-changing Garnet. Most of the time in direct light, you get a rich red garnet color.  It's brassily metallic, with really pronounced sparkle and shimmer.  The magic rainbow edge seen in the bottle fortunately translates completely onto the nail. Turn your hands even a little, and plenty of other colors are instantly there. outdoor sunset light In any angled or indirect light, you get flashes of bronze, orange, and mossy green.  This stuff right here is autumn in a bottle.  In extreme angles, it goes right to grass and even emerald green. As with a lot of duochromes, even more interesting things happen when viewed through the altered refractive index of water (SCIENCE! AWESOME!).  Little beads of water reflect bright aqua blue: this resulted in a LOT of staring at my nails ...

LA Girl is a pretty easy-on-the-wallet brand with a wide range of colors grouped into themes.  Their "Rock Star" collection had a few that piqued my interest.  Here's Addict: Addict is a truly blood-red polish: not berry, not wine, not fire-engine, blood.  The first coat is a brighter red, but by the time you build the creme/jelly finish up to opacity, it's taken on a very slightly brownish tint.  My first picture here is a good bit darker than it was IRL; it never appeared black or nearly-black in any lighting. Though it's washed out a bit, flash pics get close to the color in bright light (my crazy work schedule prevented sunlight pics, sorry): indoor, with flash The bottle has plenty of visible shimmer in it (as do several other people's swatch photos), but on my nails, the shimmer was very subtle, even in bright light.  Like many jellies or partly-jellies, it needed 3 coats to cover any patchy places (visually patchy, that is.  Each ...