Sweet Baby Octopolish!

KB shimmer's big collections are typically pretty varied - at least one each of a crème, a glitter bomb, and lately a holo - so there's often at least one that strikes my fancy.  Plum Tuckered Out was a collaboration shade with Pointless Cafe. PTO is a vampy take on the "radiant orchid color of the year" business.  It's definitely plum, far more red than a royal purple, and though it was richly dark, it never pulled a surprise-black on me.  The first coat of this crelly was sheer-to-streaky, but the second evened things right out.  I eventually did about 2 and a half, but a 3rd coat probably would have been a better idea. outdoor, full sunlight Tucked within the plum base is a generous scattering of cobalt blue chunky shimmer that's more obvious in bright light.  I do wish the blue fire was able to peek out of the base more, but it is a really pretty contrast. same direct sunlight Wear time was surprisingly good, considering how nearly jelly-l...

The Supernova collection from Brazilian maker Ludurana is a group of linear holos, with most of them also being somewhat duochromatic.  This one is Onda de Luz (in english: Ray of Light). indoor CF lighting OdL is a warm copper-to-rose subtle duochrome with a fine linear holo - the holo particles are very small, so this dries glass-smooth, and the holo has a lovely sparkling quality.  The holo isn't at all shy, and is at least subtly visible in all but very low light.  The holo flame is mostly the yellow-green part of the rainbow, which is a nice pop of contrast against the rosy coral base color. direct sunlight The fineness of the holo particles mean that they don't particularly grey out the base color when they're not obvious, and the low-light look is a sort of pearly glow. indoor, indirect late afternoon sunlight Lower light of course shows off the duochrome shift between rose and copper optimally... but super bright light amps up a copper blaze. ...

Glitter Gal is known for their holos, and possibly the most famous is their blackened green Lizard Belly. indoor CF lighting I've mentioned before that I often let the man pick a general color (hey, with this many untrieds, it's a way to narrow down the options), and when he said "black," and I was feeling more summery than flat midnight, this was one of the options.  In bright, intense light, Lizard Belly is most definitely green.  The majority of the time, though, it looks to be more of an earthy charcoal color.  The bottle shot up top is the greenest my camera would capture. outdoor, overcast sunlight Like Jen of  The Polishaholic  has been known to say, this is "holo like woah."  In almost all lighting, subtle or bright, there's at least the suggestion of a rainbow shimmering beneath the surface.  The pretty oil slick sheen makes up for the fact that most of the time on me, LB is deep grey and not at all recognizably green. flash ...

Oh sweet, sweet Scarab.   I adore Illamasqua's polishes (well, I've got two, so it's plural), and I love red like I love puppies, so getting Scarab was a no brainer. Now, when I pulled out the bottle, I thought it looked a lot like Orly Smolder, so that's what you're seeing on my index finger.  So it's a post, with a bit of comparison content (I eventually just went over my pointer with a coat of Scarab). This color is killer. It's at the more maroon end of burgundy, with a gorgeous flash, and it's just magnificent. Flourescent sunlight FLASH! One of my top 5 polishes (as if I could just pick 5 of my babies).   I love a good red, and this one coater is everything the doctor could order.  Killer pigmentation, easy application, the formula is to die for. -S.

NYC (or New York Color) is a drugstore brand with both classic and trendy colors, and a quick-dry topcoat that plenty of people on ye old interwebs swear by.  Empire State Blue is the first I've tried from them. indoor CF lighting ESB is a medium cobalt blue packed with emerald/aqua shimmer. The bottle shot up top is in fact accurate, the polish is BLUE and not teal, but the carribean shimmer absolutely makes this lean teal in most lights.  Plenty of times, there's blue around the edges of the nail (again, in the first pic) with a firey green heart, but in other lighting, it's overall a teal-y shimmer. indoor office fluorescents It goes on plenty smooth, dries quickly, and has a perfectly fine formula - no crazy puddling in the cuticles or thick gloopy mess. indoor indirect sunlight Weirdly enough, when putting on topcoat, it was almost like the TC wanted to pull and slide off, as though this had its own TC already slicking it up.  No matter, a thic...

I've mentioned before my sadness over not becoming a polish junkie until well after Llarowe's  P-series LE polishes were sold out , so imagine the rush to snap them up when she re-released them earlier this year.  Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, this stuff doesn't at all match the pics of what the original batch was, so I still don't  have that lemming.  Fortunately, however, what I did end up with is lovely anyway, and rather helps out with a different lemming altogether. indoor CF lighting P47 is a rich berry-red jelly, full of Clarins 230/Max Factor Fantasy Fire-type ruby-to-emerald color shifting shimmer.  2 coats got me to this point, and I certainly don't think it needed more than that, but as with all jellies, the more coats, the richer the color.  Described as being a vampy red, it does sometimes have a darker on the edges feel to it, but always with a little glow of embers. outdoor, late afternoon sunlight That lit-from-within glow j...

I am in the grip of a neon love right now.   When the neons started coming out earlier this year, I was very "meh" on them, but they've grown on me.  Immensely so.  At this point I'm trying to not buy out every collection I see (I'm so easy). Color Club came out with a Poptastic collection in 2011, so when they started putting out the ones in 2014, I had a hard time finding swatches online.  I ended up ordering just the pink and purple from the collection (to go with all of the other pinks and purples I already have). They have an easy formula, nothing crazy awesome, but at 4-5$/bottle, I don't need them to be perfect.   The color and intensity was insane, especially on Kapow, and the shimmer was really nice (vs the cremes, crellies, and jellies I've been seeing).   I didn't need the white base on these to make their color pop like crazy, though it certainly didn't hurt when I tried it. First - Right on, the purple in the collection: ...

Femme Fatale is a new-to-me Aussie polish maker that recently had a series of shimmering holos (the sort that flash another color in addition to flashing rainbows).  The first of the 3 I picked up is Mirror of Dawn. indoor CF lighting Dawn is a pewter-silver holo that's packed with very fine bronze-gold shimmer.  The shimmer is fine enough that the shift between silver and gold looks rather duochromatic, but this is definitely 2 different pigments and not one color-shifting pigment (scientist polish nerd must accurately categorize!!!!).  The silver base is a pewter color cool enough to be somewhat blueish when the gold isn't around. outdoor, indirect sunlight But it takes barely a tilt toward the light for the not-at-all-shy gold shimmer to creep across, yep, like dawn breaking over the grey. h/t to Suzy for the produce-as-prop beauty! The more intense the direct light, the more obvious the gold flash becomes, with the holo making an appearance, too, as ...

A picnic party at work somehow had a bunch of us deciding that it was green nail polish day, so it was time to try out Peppered Amazon, from Sinful Colors' summer collection. indoor CF lighting Peppered Amazon is neither peppery, nor colored like an Amazon parrot.  It's a richly saturated jade green (that has a tendency to stain the hell out of one's cuticles, so paint careful, folks!) that's packed with very fine silver shimmer.  It dries totally smooth and shiny on its own, and is easily opaque in 2 coats.  I decided to amp up the silver with a rough french tip in OPI Crown Me Already. CMA is silver glitter in 2 sizes in a clear base.  The glitter payoff is great - this is all one coat over PA - but the larger glitters come out more sparsely than you'd like (you need to place the bigger pieces a little more intentionally). check out the silvery shimmer in Peppered Amazon Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  This is a really nice green on its ow...