Sweet Baby Octopolish!

While visiting my family for the holiday, my sister and I were finishing up some last-minute shopping, and came across most all of the new OPI Holiday 2014 collection in the sale baskets at Marshall's. I snapped up the 2 I'd been interested in, Christmas Gone Plaid (promptly used to help make  tape tree nails for everyone ), and First Class Desires. outdoor, sunlight First Class Desires is a known dupe for the also recent Zoya Sansa: darkest eggplant purple with lots of golden shimmer.  The bottle shot tells you everything you need to know: it's gonna look near-black fairly often, but it's always going to be sparkly. In bright light, the shimmer is definitely gold, but in softer light, the rest of the subtle colors become more visible. indirect, overcast light And the closer you get, the green and lavender metallic twinkles take the fore. Rating:  3 out of 5 stars. A very pretty shade for fall and winter, and a warmer alternative than stark blac...

Tape trees are pretty much the staple of Christmas decorated nails:  super easy, yet resulting in a clearly identifiable design.  All you need is some quick-dry topcoat and some basic scotch tape, of the sort that's already laying around on the table where your mom was wrapping presents just a little while ago. It's as simple as painting on your desired base color, topcoating and waiting for a good 10-15 (if you're using something as fast as HK Girl), then placing 2 small pieces of tape such that it makes a triangle with the free edge of the nail.  Brush on your tree color and peel the tape while it's wet.  Add some Glitter tinsel or ornaments or a star topper if that's your thing.  Done. For mine, I used OPI Christmas Gone Plaid for the thumb, middle finger, and tree; a England Perceval for the index and pinky; Julep Mia for the silver ring finger, and all topped with a bit of Jade Irresistivel because my soon-to-be-sister in law said more sparkles is...

I have rather liked the couple of Hunger Games nail polishes from CoverGirl I've tried so far.  This one looked festive enough in the bottle that it was a perfect flying-to-visit-for-the-holidays sparkle. indoor CF lighting Seared Bronze is a sheer golden bronze that has plenty of sparkle in most any light.  You can see by the wash of twinkly particles clinging to the side of the bottle both that it's way sheer and that it's a ultrafine microglitter.  This is 3 coats, and there's still some VNL going on, especially when the light shines through. indirect overcast sunlight There's definitely multiple colors to the microglitter, and in real life, it looks like more than just the gold and copper here - I occasionally saw subtle flashes of green and pink - but to the eye at a distance (as in, how normal people would see your nails), it's bronze. indirect overcast sunlight Even in low light, this has a glass fleck glimmer; it never appears vis...

The first one was so great, I had to move right on to another of the ILNP multichrome flakies.  My partner picked a blue base and Success to layer over it. indirect sunlight Success is a predominantly kelly green flakie that shifts to shimmery pink on the nail.  In bright lighting, it often looked bronze-gold, probably because these flakes are so metallically shiny, and not because the color actually shifts there. very bright CFL - here's where it looks most metallic In lower light, the shift was more apparent (like duochromes often do), with both green and violet-pink there, and a touch of aqua blue here and there. outdoor, overcast light At some angles, the green was a rich, saturated emerald: indirect bright sunlight And at very steep angles, it hit a violet purple that was nearly impossible to catch on camera (attempts at color correction to make my skin not yellow here were a total disaster, but the color of the purple flash is nonethel...

I was on a lovely tropical getaway all last week, and somehow totally forgot to get any good pics of my beach nails (whoops!), but came home to several shipments worth of goodness.  Most eagerly anticipated were of course ILNP's new multichrome flakie topcoats.  I picked 5 of them, and the first one for a test drive is Brilliance. indoor CF lighting This is 2 coats of Brilliance over 1.5 coats of Wet N Wild's Poison Ivy (which I've apparently never blogged by itself, but it's a vampy, blackened emerald green shimmer).  Check out that bottle shot:  flashes of blue around the edges and pink in the center, but mostly centered around gold and green - same as what it ends up looking like on the nail. indoor, office fluorescents In bright lighting, it's very much gold and green, but often with a hint of pink flash toward the center.  In lower lighting, that pink flash becomes a whole lot more obvious (like duochromes tend to do). outdoor, indirect over...

Out of a recent collection of mostly re-promotes (like Sinful usually does), this one new and theoretically limited edition shade had us nail bloggers all aflutter:  Prosecco. indoor CF lighting Prosecco is a cool, pale taupe packed with a color-shifting shimmer that goes from gold to copper to green.  The shimmer reminds me a lot of the sort found in a few of the OPI James Bond polishes, like On Her Majesty's Secret Service. check out those little flashes of copper & green! It's a little sheer, and not quite watery.  2-3 coats are necessary to get this even, but it cleans up very easily, without a shimmer-fest stuck all over you, though in macros it seems like the shimmers may actually be micro-flakes. indoor, bright LED lighting The combination of taupe + metallic flakes reminded me pretty quickly of Orly's Nite Owl, so I pulled out the bottles & swatch sticks for comparison. Nite Owl is darker and more opaque, and has silver shimmer to Pr...

Like most polish crazies, I've been checking out a lot of black friday/cyber monday/just because it's shopping season sales to feed my habit, and I came across Ripley from OCC, and Temptalia's amazing swatch thereof .  Before I clicked buy, I remembered something awfully similar in the untried stash:  LA Girl's Antique Gold. indirect overcast light Ripley is described as "blackened, antique olive-gold," which I'd slap right on as the description for this one as well.  check out the darkened edges as soon as this gets near any shade. It's a rich, cool bronze, with a fine foil finish - it dries smooth, but glosses up a lot with top coat, and would probably be killer mattified as well. And yes indeed, just like Ripley, it gets to a murky swamp green in the right lighting. Now, you can't actually call anything a dupe if you don't have the two things in hand to compare, but these pics are about identical to the pics of Ripley...

Other than the  awesomeness that is Pale Blue Dots , my next pick from Digital's scientists collection was the thermal Bitch, Plesiosaur: indoor CF lighting Bitch, Plesiosaur wins for having one of the best polish names ever, and in Raph's words, "is a nod to Marry Anning, and play on words which gives acknowledgement to my reaction of a patriarchal dominated field in her time, and still today." It's a golden nude (warm) to warm brown (cold) shimmer, packed with matte white glitter in a few sizes/shapes. outdoor, direct sunlight The cool shade is a rich, opaque chocolate that leans ever so slightly to mahogany - i.e., it's got just a touch of red in the brown. At all times through the color shift, there's a lovely golden shimmer visible, that sometimes flashes just a little green.  I'm also rather a fan of how well the glitter matches, warm or cool. indoor, office fluorescents The shimmers & glitters don't need bright ...