Sweet Baby Octopolish!

KPT hit it out of the park twice - Swimming With Mermaids, my 2nd pick from her anniversary trio is another huge winner. bright CF lighting Like Calypso, SWM is a jelly-based thermal rather than the usual opaque shimmer.  I'm kind of in love with the idea and really hope she makes more of these - the color is lovely, and the glassy smooth finish is far easier to work with than the rubberized matte that thermals usually dry down to. direct sunlight Mermaids is studded with the same silvery holo microglitter as Calypso, but the formula is a little more translucent, needing 3 coats for the saturation you see here. direct sunlight All of my other thermals have a distinctly darker and lighter color that really makes the transition pop as a band of color at the free edge.  Because SWM's two shades are at about the same darkness, the transition zone typically looked more like a very smoothly done gradient than a funky french tip. overcast daylight While

MOAR THERMALS!! The other of the limited Dance Legend Mortal Kombat trio I picked up is Reptile's teal-ish blue sister, Sub Zero. bright CF lighting Sub Zero is almost identical in formula and temperament to Reptile:  it's a tonal thermal in a crelly sort of finish, the light color is a little more translucent than the dark color, the dark color is nearly black, there's fantastic flakies in there, and it dries rubbery matte so you need a topcoat. outdoor, direct sunlight Where Sub Zero has that little extra OOMPH, though, is that shimmer - in direct light (as in the bottle shot above), the sparkles are a contrasting fiery red flash, while at angles it's a golden green - yep, it's our favorite Clarins 230/Fantasy Fire red-to-green sparkle. that emerald flash! The flakies are the "ocean" sort, where there's a subtle shift from blue to green.  Most of the time, they appear pretty close to the blue end of the spectrum. window-filter

Moar thermals!!!  KPT is known in indie-polish-land for her thermals, and Molybdenum is one that's been hanging out on Mount Untried for far too long. indoor, CF lighting Molybdenum was part of a series of 3 or 4 "transitional elements" thermals, each of which were named after a mineral of some type.  This one is does a tonal shift from charcoal grey to pale neutral silver, with each shade packed with sparkly shimmer. bright CF lighting I had to cheat to get this pic - yep, another one that managed to be mostly either/or and rarely funky french tip on me.  my thumb above was just doused in warm water, while the rest of my nails are somewhere along the shift from cool to warm. direct sunlight The warm color is a really nice, sparkly silver that I think would be flattering on anyone's skin tone that normally looks good with silver.  It had a subtle taupe undertone, and was very neutral overall - I think this would be a very slightly subversive office n

After KPT Calypso was so fantastic, I've decided it's thermal-palooza around here...the fact that a pair from KPT arrived at about the same time as a pair of Dance Legend LE thermals did has everything to do with this plan.  First up of the DLs is Reptile. bright CF lighting Reptile is one of a trio of Mortal Kombat-themed polishes, so  obviously this gets stuck in my head  every time I ponder that.  Anyway, all 3 of these are tonal thermals that shift from a lighter to a darker tone of the same color.  Reptile is a bright, saturated kelly green when warm, and a very dark, near-black evergreen when cool. bright CF lighting At it's darkest, Reptile reminds me a lot of the pics I've seen of NARS Zulu - you can always just barely tell it's green, though. indirect, overcast daylight Unfortunately, unlike Calypso's hovering right at that thermal ideal point most of the time, I rarely had these awesome french tips hanging out - it was usually either/

I was so excited about these new anniversary thermals from KPT that the first one, Calypso, jumped right to the top of the to-be-tried-out list.  I ended up loving it so much that it's going to be all thermals for the next week around here! indoor, CF lighting Calypso is a royal purple (cold) to magenta-pink (warm) jelly, with a scattering of round holo micro-glitters.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, but the purple is more opaque than the pink - when warm, I had one or two slightly thinner areas that were visible in macro pics but not IRL.  The jelly formula was easy to work with and wonderfully smooth on its own, and had a perfect glassy shine with one layer of topcoat. outdoor, indirect sunlight There's also some hot pink shimmer here that miiiight shift a little toward blue (or else I'm dazzled by the twinkles in bright light, no guarantees either way).  Very interestingly, the silver glitters are even more rainbow in lower or indoor light than in bright sunli

The boy said "green," so I pulled out a sparkler that I'd gotten in the most recent Zoya promotion, Logan. bright CF lighting Logan was part of the 2012 Holiday collection that Zoya called "the ornate collection" and you can certainly see why.  The bottle shot above is completely color accurate: a rich pine green, packed with green and gold shimmers that are just a little more subtle than something you'd count as glassfleck. outdoor, indirect cloudy daylight The shimmers were the kind that get stuck all over everything, so that plus the dark base made cleanup tricky; paint careful, peeps. same cloudy daylight In some lighting, the shimmers looked more silvery, but with a strong flash of sun or fluorescent, they were back to gold & green. outdoor, indirect sunlight Logan went opaque in 2 smooth coats, and the small brush is pretty easy to manipulate.  It dries to a pretty shine, but topcoat is what makes it glow. direct sunligh

Woohoo fireworks time!  And what better fireworks polish than one that sets off its own lightshow too?  This is Serum No 5's What a Blast. bright CF lighting Blast is a sheer grey-white packed with red, white, and blue glitters, plus silver holo star glitter.  I've layered 2 coats of it over one coat of OPI Calling All Goddesses (a translucent grey-white), but it would be pretty without undies too. indoor, filtered sunlight outdoor, indirect sunlight Glitter payoff was fantastic, with a very even spread of all the little bits with swiped coats.  I dabbed the 2nd coat only a little to fill in more around my cuticle edges, but this wasn't at all a fussy glitter.  Very conveniently, the larger stars tended to stick to the brush longer, so I could place them more on top of the other glitters for about half my nails.  It's of course very textured and topcoat hungry, and I could still feel some rough bits here and there after 2 layers of topcoat. indoor, f

I utterly swooned on first sight of  Anna Gorelova's pics of  the Dance Legend LE The Knight - gold to silver metallic duochrome?  How was that magic even possible?!  But when I got the bottle, its similarity to all the Chanel Peridot clones was a little disappointing, so this ended up on mount untried for quite a while.  I'm happy to say that the look in the bottle and on the nail are totally different. indoor, CF lighting The bottle shows a greenish-bronze that rings out to blue and nearly purple - much like Peridot/OPI Just Spotted the Lizard/all the other clones do.  On the nail, though, that's not at all the case, and the total difference in appearance from the bottle to the nail in this pick is completely accurate. outdoor, overcast daylight At extreme angles, a steely blue to nearly purple color peeked out (above), and in very soft light I could sometimes see a more Peridot-looking pastel duochrome (below).  I think the differentiation between this &