Sweet Baby Octopolish!

And we have another winner from Elevation Polish. Rapa Nui (so fun to say, too). It's from the 180 Degrees South Collection, and is a blue/grey with a pink/red shimmer.   It's really spectactular.   Once again, I love the color, the shimmer, application. life and wear of this mani.  This polish, so much love.   Elevation is always so amazing. Fluorescent Outdoor, indirect. Just gorgeous.  And, for me, it came out looking a lot less blue than many swatches I have seen, but I know indies have batch variability.  Either way, I'm super happy with this.  And can be gotten from their big cartel site .  So much love for these guys. -S.

Let me tell you a story about this polish. Once upon a time, someone mentioned that butter London had some Nordie's exclusive called Prince's Plums.   I am not a huge fan of butter London because of personal chemistry issues (it lasts precisely not at all on me), but I googled and googled and found one picture of PP that looked good enough to make a decision on. And I went home, and went back out in the driving rain, with a migraine, to the mall to go to Nordstrom's, looking like something the drugged cat dragged in to buy this polish.   The Sales associates looked unimpressed with me.  Whatever.  I was there on a mission. And this polish is worth it.  It's purple, but with a mulberry-plum-red base that shows off at the edges.  And it flashes different colors and totally glows. My boss.  MY BOSS, who has absolutely no understanding of my polish needs actually complimented me on this one. FLASH!  There's the red... and the sparkle! ...

Today, I bring you the best nude I've ever worn.    The color is glorious, the application was easy, and it wore amazingly well. It's called Kim, and it's from Ruby White Tips (which is easily one of my top two favorite indie polish brands). I've been looking for some good nudes, and I saw this one online hoping it would work.  Oh look, it did. Indoors, incandescent Indoors, flourescent Indoors flourescent, again Indoors, mixed light Indoors, again, and abusing the poor dog (hey, if she lays on me, she gets to be a prop) I love the color, I love the subtle sparkle, I loved the application.   This one also wore like a beast, only without the help of any snazzy topcoats.   Other RWT polishes I've tried have worn just as well.  So far, this is one of my very favorite polishes, definitely the best nude ever, and the shop is awesome (they give money to bats!!!!), so go buy their stuff . -S.

Pahlish's Fleur de Sel... It's supposed to be reminiscent of the Himalayan pink salt that you see gracing the stores and foodies's dinner tables these days, and the pink flakes do convey that feeling, but I want the base to be less.... white. And if I wear it again, I will franken it to make the base pinker.   It's a perfectly lovely polish, if that's your thing, but it didn't work for me. I was a little annoyed with the application because it was much thicker than I'm used to. Fluorescent lighting Evening sunlight Indoor, incandescent Another indoor/incandescent. I like Pahlish overall, this was just a mis-step on my part.  It's just not me (though I love salt, I think I just overlooked the color for the theme). -S.

And here we have Extravagance from the Designer Series by OPI. I've been wanting this particular polish for a while, but was hesitant because I've had problems with previous DS polishes being super chippy on me. Not this one.  This one is just gorgeous on a stick finger Outdoor lighting Indoor, fluorescent FLASH! I love the deep, mulberry pink.  I love the scattered holo.  I pretty much love everything about it.  It wore like a champ and made me a happy little clam.  This is definitely one of my favorites. -S.

Once upon a time I had to go to an office party and pretend to be classy and shit.  Also, once upon a time, I got a new topcoat and basecoat I wanted to try out.  Luckily, these two things coincided and I could have a little fun. a England polishes do not wear well on me.  They chip and fall apart after a couple of hours, and I think it's just a personal chemistry thing (they wear like iron on Michelle and others I know).   I had just gotten Glisten & Glow's HK Girl top-coat and a new holo-base by Dance Legend and thought I would see if I could lengthen the wear. I had seen the new Ballerina collection from a England, and while I was underwhelmed initially, I saw some swatches of Her Rose Adagio that led me to believe it would be a good color por moi. And it was.  And the new stuff worked well. Her Rose Adagio has a very soft holo to it.  Enough to jazz it up, but not enough to make it blingy or obnoxious, so if you want to be ladylike ...

Elevation Polish has to be one of my top two favorite indie brands.  Evar.   Every one of their polish I've tried is gorgeous, goes on like a dream, self levels beautifully, and wears like a beast. Plus - cool names. This is Pic de Subenuix.   I almost didn't buy it, y'all.   I'm thinking "oh, purpley/teal, hrmph, they never look good on me... this isn't really my kind of color..." I was so very, very wrong. It took 3 thin coats to build well.  The base is purple, but it has a lot of killer blue/teal shimmer in it.   I got a dusty purple in outdoor lighting sometimes, but the camera picked up the shimmer whether I liked it or not.   So we have a lot of photo heavy to show off the different shimmers. Incandescent lighting - shows off the darker teal/purpley look I have my fingers at an odd angle here, to try to grab the purple.  Indirect/cloudy natural lighting This is what it looked like a...

a England's  Burne-Jones dream collection  is a series of softly scattered holos (think subtle, tiny rainbow sparkles, not bold flames of prismatic rainbow) based on a series of sleeping beauty paintings.  The rose red shade is called Rose Bower. indirect natural sunlight  It's not really a bold fire-engine RED, but softer, more rosy.  I'm not often a fan of true reds, since they can make my already pale skin look paper-white, but this one is very wearable. Nearly a one-coater, there's two here, but adding the second didn't deepen or alter the color at all.  Like most of this brand I've tried, the formula is about perfect: neither thick nor runny, very self-leveling, and glossy even before topcoat. the white-ish shadows? reflection of the snow out the window.  srsly. The holo in this polish is very subtle indeed.  It's really more a suggestion of sparkle that gives the color more depth than it is a recognizable holographic.  ...

Suzy got me UD's  other gorgeous LE shade  for Xmas, Zodiac. It's a very dark evergreen, with a subtle near-duochrome sparkle. These flashes of purple and blue weren't at all apparent just looking at it, but the camera picked them up pretty readily.  The color is utterly gorgeous and lush, but it took 3 coats to get there...and i still don't think I'm totally opaque with even that (check out the see-thru patch on my ring finger in the left of the above pic).  Sadly, it also wore very quickly on me, with obvious tip wear the morning after I'd painted. It totally wins the award for most badass bottle of nail polish ever, though.  Mr. Skullhead is way tuff. yes, I'm totally out in the "polar vortex" taking pics here Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.  The color is fantastic, but it's wearing on me like makeup, which is to say, not long at all.  Suzy had much better luck with hers, so I'm assuming this is one of those individual che...

Bite Tonight  was rich and lovely, but not the superstar stand-out of the Candy Flakes collection I thought it would be, so I figured it was time to move on to the next one, and WOW. Final Fantasy is a purple jelly, filled with both ocean flakies (the sort that shift from blue to aqua to a little green) and a fine ruby-red shimmer.  It starts off very sheer, and at first, I was worried this couldn't be built to an even coverage. the first coat - I could see straight through it. Fortunately, even on that first coat, the sparkle and flakes were obvious, and more than enough to keep me optimistic about how this was going to work out.  Even more fortunately, the much thinner/more sheer texture meant that i didn't have any of the overloaded brush or too-thick coats issues that I did with Bite Tonight. outdoor, indirect sunlight The red shimmer and aqua-blue flakes stayed readily visible after the 3+ coats it took to even this out (some nails needed a partial 4...

I was all aflutter about the Dance Legend Candy Flakes collection (because flakies!), and managed to snag 3 of them in the collection launch at Llarowe a couple weeks ago.  Here's the first one, Bite Tonight. The color on the nail is very true to what's in the bottle:  a very dark, vampy red-maroon, that's packed with fire flakies (the sort that shift from red to gold, with occasional green flash).  2 coats for complete opacity. outoor sunset light Most of the time for me, this polish looks nearly black, which typically I don't like. When I want to wear black polish, I wear black polish on purpose.  But the vibrant crimson flakes are always visible, so even at a distance, this stays vampy deep red. This polish had a medium consistency (neither too thick or thin), but the long wand had a problematic tendency to pick up way too much and drip it down onto my nail while painting, so that I was getting too-thick coats even after wiping off a more than typi...