Sweet Baby Octopolish!

All nailista children of the 80s have painted their nails purple this week, and since His Royal Badness was always flash, a plain purple just wouldn't do. indoor, CF lighting Ever After released Fangtasia as part of this past Halloween's Hella Holo Customs True Blood collaborations.  It's a bright purple that leans just very slightly more red than blue, with a light jelly formula that's easy to work with and results in a sparklingly linear holo, plus multichrome flakes. filtered shady daylight for both The jelly formula is completely self-leveling and gives a nice gloss even before topcoating.  In low light, the delicate rainbow of multichrome flakes adds a whole lot of interest. outdoor, bright sunlight for both In brighter light, the linear holo was in full effect, with a pretty paler purple flash (or is it just crazy shine?) up the center. indoor, bright CF lighting Rating:  4 out of 5 stars, totally perfect other than the fact that jell...

Just a couple of years ago (2013, in fact), China Glaze released their Hologlam collection of linear holos with space-themed names.  I snapped up a couple on deep discount from a destash recently, and tried out the first of my pair with an accent dotticure.  This one is Strap on Your Moonboots. indoor, bright CF lighting Moonboots is an almost dusty denim blue with a thicker, creamy formula that's fully opaque in 2 coats.  I've paired it up here with an accent nail of Color Club's Williamsburg on the middle finger and some dots of both colors + Dreams Pisces (a silvery blue glitter) on ring and middle fingers.  Of course my dots didn't spread evenly with the 3 different formulae, but pffffft, ignore that. shady, early norming filtered daylight The color is rich and rather pretty... but damn have we come a long way with our holos.  This stuff dries fast enough that you get one pass with the brush before you're done or else risk lifting up the polish a...

This week found me headed off to a business trip in sunny south Texas, calling for a nice professional color... with a sparkle.  I've recently snagged a few Pahlish LEs, and the taupe Paper Flowers fit the bill. indoor, bright CF lighting Paper Flowers is a January 2016 Bespoke Batch (one and done pour) in a warm cocoa taupe color with a linear holo and bronze flash. indoor, CF lighting Since I was out on bizness this week, I sadly have few "real" pics of this polish.  It was a little thick (Pahlish tends to need a couple of drops of thinner from me), but wore nicely without chipping while out of town, and that's rather important. indoor, whatever lights are in a hotel lobby, plus some WAY early am sunlight The bronze flash is aaaaaalmost duochromatic, shading somewhere closer to coppery at angled lighting, but I was wholly unable to capture that.  The holo is plenty present indoor or out.  For some reason, this polish has a tendency to separate out...

When you have an untried pile well larger than intended and all clamoring for your attention, you gotta come up with some way to pick one for the next round; my method is usually to poll the man.  This time, he's adamant about both red and blue.  "I'm going to look like superman or something, " I say.  "Well, it has to stand out," he says. outdoor, direct sunlight Well, alright then baby. Brazillian brand Jade makes marvelous holos, typically of the jelly sort with a bright linear flame.  The first coat always looks a little too sheer to work, but nope, nice opacity with 2 coats and a perfectly manageable formula.  Vermelho Surreal (Surreal Red, if my Portugese is correct) leans just the slightest bit orange-wards of true apple red, and goes on quite easily. indoor, bright CF lighting I've stamped over it using the the paisley henna-styled waves from the BP-10 plate, covering only my ring & middle fingers entirely and highlighting t...

One of the lovely ladies in my fb nail polish group posted a devastating swatch of BPAL's The House That Bleeds.  Since it had already been challenge enough to talk myself out of these inspired by Crimson Peak things, I had to dive into my stash and find the closest dupe I could to avoid even more impulse purchases.  Oh, wait, my first sampling of Trust Fund Beauty included a dead-on vampy red... indoor, bright CF lighting Just Call My Lawyer is a super saturated, extra vampy, red-with-a-hint-of-brown (let's not quite say dried blood) shimmer packed into a deep charcoal base color. you can sorta see the charcoal crelly base at the cuticle edge here It's the perfect vampy shade in that it never looks quite black, but it does sometimes look like black velvet that just happens to shine red: outdoor, late afternoon sunlight It's a pretty perfect dead of winter color, especially if you're doing something daring or sophisticated for the holidays. ind...

I headed off out of town this past weekend for several days of birthday party shenanigans with Suzy, so I wanted to go with something a little blingy.  Here's Cirque's Halcyon. indirect, overcast daylight Halcyon was part of Cirque's 2015 Holiday collection, and purchase of it gave a charity donation to Girls Who Code, so that's pretty sweet too.  It's a luscious rose gold foil, almost a one-coater but perfect in two, supremely metallic and utterly blinding in the sun. indoor CF lighting I forgot to get a proper bottle shot with hand pose, but you can see in the macro here that the finish is made up of metallic microflakies in a presumably clear base.  It goes on deliciously smooth, is flawlessly self-leveling, and has a very subtle texture when dry before topcoat. indirect, shady morning daylight I stamped a 2-sided accent sunburst design from Bundle Monster's BM-402 plate using NanaCoco Love Black (srsly, best black stamping polish ever...

I don't remember who or where or what pointed me in the general direction of OPI's Sonic Bloom, but you, anonymous hero(ine) of the internet, are fabulous. indoor, CF lighting Sonic Bloom was from the 2005 Brights collection, and that it certainly is.  It has a somewhat sheer, sorta watery formula (reminiscent of  Austin-tatious Turquoise ), only it was magically close enough to opaque at just 2 coats, and only flooded my cuticles a little bit.  It's a beautiful summer-sky blue, with this killer acid green flash on top. The interwebs recently tipped me off to the magic of NanaCoco Love Black as the ultimate black stamping polish, and  I'd just received a passel of sheer jellies for leadlighting, so this ocean became a koi pond, using Bundle Monster plate BP-725. indoor, office fluorescents DAAAAAAAYYYYUM.  Love Black rocketed beyond expectations.  Perfectly opaque, supremely easy to work with (doesn't dry so fast you have to be ...

I found myself heading off to a very brief business trip earlier this week, so a less-flashy, professional sort of color was in order.  But not boring or plain, geez.  Fair Maiden's Tauplexed fit the bill fine. indoor, bright CF lighting Tauplexed is a shade of "taupe" that's utterly unique in my stash.  In some lighting, yes, it's that shade between tan and grey that we call taupe, but it just as often looked pink-tinged or lavender or "gravender" and in most cases more generally colorful than I think of when using the word taupe. outdoor, direct sunlight It also has a lovely coppery-gold flash in the center of a very finely linear holo arc, and a dusting of metallic bronze microflake that was super shy IRL and in pics. indirect, overcast daylight.  this is as close to the microflake shimmer as we're going to get. The holo rainbow is pretty, but visible only in bright sunlight.  Which, not coincidentally, makes this a perfect sligh...