Sweet Baby Octopolish!

When Suzy sent me a pic of her wearing this, I pretty quickly obtained my own bottle:  Picture Polish Kryptonite. indoor CF lighting  Kryptonite is a rich forest green of the sort that's a touch more blue than yellow (in the 90s, we called this "hunter green").  The shade is dark enough to feel like a vampy autumn color, but never appeared near-black.  It's a jelly finish sparkling with the silvery holo fragments that PP does so well. check out the squishy depth in the sun As is often the case with this type of holo particle, it looks to be silvery at least as often as it's rainbow - it's a subtle holo rather than a rainbow flame.  The formula was great, neither too thick or thin, and without the cuticle pooling that would make cleanup for a green this dark be total hell (do paint careful with this, though, since getting it off any cuticles is as challenging as expected). indirect sunlight The jelly formula gives a killer shine and rea...

Like I said earlier, I'm all professional this week, but have no plans to let that be plain.  Now that winter's grip is loosening, I've been eyeing my holos more again, and pulled out Estrela from Brazilian maker Ludurana. indoor CF lighting Estrela is from the Supernova collection - super sparkly linear holos, with a subtle duochrome effect.  This one is a pearly pinkish nude color with plenty of rainbow twinkle and a soft, silvery blue flash in the center. indoor CF lighting At extreme angles where the holo isn't as noticeable, the blue pearl shifts to a rosy, almost copper color. Polishes in this line are scented, but the vaguely baby powder aroma was very subtle and gone after the first day.  2 coats was nicely opaque, and this wore ok, with a few chips showing up by the 3rd day. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.  Pretty and feminine, and certainly flashier than a plain nude. Where to buy:   Color4Nails  sells Ludurana. ~Michelle

For some reason, I feel the need to be all professional at work this week, and put down the greens and blues for just a sec.  Still, I'm not ready to give up all things interesting (pink crème girl, not so much), so I pulled out Barry M's Dusky Mauve.  I'm a huge fan of things that are two colors at once (duochromes FTW!), and contrasting shimmer polishes certainly fit the bill. indoor CF lighting Dusky Mauve is really more taupe than mauve - it's a cool, dark mushroom crème with a lovely purple shimmer that gives it a plum cast in most lighting. outdoor direct sunlight It's a known dupe for the far pricier Chanel Paradoxical, and Chanel's standard MO is subtle, borderline hidden shimmer.  If the shimmer here were a little more prominent, I'd love it a whole lot more. sunlight Still, when the shimmer is there, ooof.  This one is an edgy modern neutral with a little sneaky something extra, and it feels very chic.  The shine that one la...

OPI's DS series are hoarded by OPI fanatics, and often with good reason.  They were some of the first US mainstream holos (though plenty of them are other things now), and the colors are often just fantastic.  Here's DS Extravagance. indoor, CF lighting Extravagance caught my eye after I'd been drooling over a handful of very similar polishes: Picture Polish Moscow has the same softly scattered holo in rich wine, and Fancy Gloss Frozen Berries did too (though they've now changed their formula to a more linear one before I was able to snap up a bottle of the original).  Since Ebay was able to provide me with a bottle of Extravagance for less than $10, that was a no-brainer answer to all the similar things I was coveting. outdoor, sunlight Extravagance is a rich berry-wine that's nearly a one-coater (there are 2 here), packed with a shimmering, softly scattered holo.  It's a little more intense than a England's type of scattered holo, with definite...

Here's a little holiday flash for your St. Pat's, with the bonus benefit of also being a green holo comparison! outdoor, direct sunlight For the annual greenest of holidays, I pulled 5 linear green holos out of my stash for a quick ombre.  Thumb-to-pinky, I have  Different Dimension Good Evening Clarice ,  Enchanted Polish March 2014 , Dance Legend Android, Colors by Llarowe Gizmo, and Pahlish Bialowieza Forest. direct sunlight Good Evening Clarice is color-accurate in the top photo, but appears whited out in these other two.  Though it's the least holographic, that's more than made up for by its spectacular glow-in-the-dark magic (lolz my spooky thumbs at night!).  When used alone, Android appears to be a much more kelly green, but in comparison with the rest (and mostly in comparison with the very yellow-green March 2014 right next to it), it leans toward teal.  Gizmo is easily the most linear out of all of these.  Bialowieza Forest wa...

It's always nice when "LE" collections are locatable long after they're released, for those of us that end up magnetically drawn to some swatch photos a couple of years after the party happened.  Space Cadet was from Orly's 2010 mineral FX collection, and is  a known dupe for MAC's Mean & Green , and sorta for Hard Candy's Beetle, too. indoor, indirect sunlight Space Cadet is a very fine microglitter in a wine-to-bronze duochrome that I apparently love to pieces, since I  keep buying it  over  and over and over .  The unique twist here is that the base is a murky deep green jelly that really changes the look in certain lights or at certain angles.   direct sunlight Yep, that earthy green shading to the edges, and a lot of the time to the golden bronze, is totally unique to this one (and its known dupes).  To let that green glimmer through, this polish is fairly sheer in the way that makes the tips look a little see-thru, and too...

While scrounging around WalMart for the very last jug of the "no-rub acetone power gel," my eye was caught by a bright flash of emerald green.  Apparently, CoverGirl has a trio of new duochromes out, and spoiler alert, this one is great. outdoor, shady light Emerald Blaze is, exactly like it says, a richly saturated emerald green.  This is 2 coats, and those 2 were all I needed for complete opacity.  Huzzah for drugstore duochromes that don't need dark undies! indoor, indirect sunlight With pretty minimal tilting, that green shifts through bronze and on to a rich, mahogany brown. outdoor, overcast sunlight Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  Good formula, decent brush, and rich color from a $4 drugstore polish?  That also happens to be a pretty dead-on dupe for the LE Sprite OPI Green on the Runway?  Yes, please. Where to buy:  CoverGirl is widely available at most drug or grocery stores. ~Michelle

Well, Fancy Pants didn't work for me solo, but I have way too many untried toppers to just scrap it and start over. indoor, CF lighting  After Party was a very inexpensive shard glitter topper from Icing (the mall costume jewelry store).  There's legends of Icing and Claire's each having some dupes to high-end or even hard-to-find polishes, so I generally peek in their bins on the rare occasions I find myself at a mall.  After Party has big shreds of pink, red-orange, aqua-blue, silver, and yellow mylar in a clear base.  One coat distributed very evenly, and I filled in a few spots with a little dabbing.  Surprisingly for this being a chunky shred, with just one layer of topcoat none of the pieces stuck up off the nail or snagged in my clothes: suddenly, that sad violet was totally wearable for a few days. Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  A nice pick-me-up, with plenty of potential for holiday or party looks. Where to buy:  I don't know that ...

Sometimes, you spy some things on sale in the Ulta clearance bin that strike you as a good idea at the time.  I've found plenty of discount gems in those bins, but sadly for me, China Glaze's Fancy Pants wasn't one of them. indoor CF lighting Fancy Pants, from the 2013 spring collection, is one of those violet blue shades that's very tricky to photograph color-accurately (hence the yellowy fingers above).  It's just a hair too intensely blue above, but about right in the bottom two. outdoor, late afternoon sunlight From the bottle shot, you can see some fantastic red-plum fire shimmer peeking out of the violet crème.  Despite the bright, direct light for all of these shots, though, that shimmer is pretty hidden.  In indoor office or home lighting, this color is a nearly flat crème, in a color that's less than flattering to my skin tone.  Insult to injury: this started chipping in less than a day. this is as shimmery as it's gonna get Rating...