Sweet Baby Octopolish!

I think I love duochromes absolutely best of all the possible polish choices... yeah, even more than flakies and holo.  And arguably the queen of duochrome polishes is the mind behind ILNP. indoor, CF lighting From the 2014 summer collection, Peace is one of ILNP's "older" duochromes, and I picked up the regular version before the holo version was available.  It's a deep, rich purple that shifts into plenty of other mostly cool shades. indoor, CF lighting The bottle shot above and the arced fingers below show the full range of Peace's transition - no crazy underwater acrobatics necessary.  At low angles, it'll get all the way down to an inky sapphire blue, while at acute angles it'll go past magenta and on to gold and finally just a little bit of green.  IMHO all of these pics are color-accurate, this line of polishes all really do hit all of these colors. window-filtered daylight As is really consistent for all of ILNP's multichromes...

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics has a thing for lushly glowy colors...that somehow have managed to sit around on mount untried for months and months, like things do around here.  When the man picked red for his color prompt this week, it was clearly time to crack one open. indoor, bright CF lighting OCC Black Metal Dahlia is a drop-dead gorgeous scarlet metallic.  It's so shiny that there's an almost berry flash in the middle that fades into almost blackened edges - a real "glowing from within" sort of color.  NB: OCC makes another shade called simply "Black Dahlia," a very dark oxblood creme, so check the name closely to get the one you actually want. late afternoon sunlight It's almost a one-coater, but I've used 2 here, and in hindsight a single slightly thicker coat may have been a better bet to keep things in total thinner.  OCC's super tall flat bottle means you have to work quickly before an unexpectedly big volume of polish...

I love me a good grey - it's my fave neutral.  And I love neutrals with sparkles - there's something that just gets me about holo or flakies or a duochrome shift peeking out of what is a plain, tasteful office appropriate sort of shade.  I had a big professional event this weekend, so a classy neutral was a must. indoor, bright CF lighting Frenzy Polish Dauntless is a cool taupe grey jelly filled with an assortment of iridescent gold hex glitter and very small ultrachrome flakes.  I'm showing it here in 2 coats; 3 would probably be opaque, but I was planning on stamping over it right away, so I was fine with a bit of translucency.  This is most definitely the sort of color that looks softly sexy with a little sheerness, and it was smooth and level for both of these coats, not at all streaky like some jellies can be. outdoor, overcast daylight My bottle and Frenzy's site both say Dauntless, but most all of the other swatches I found before purchase were of...

MOAR shifty shimmer!!   The man picked blue for today, and royal, bright blue is his fave, and this has been sitting too long in my untried mountain:  Dreamland You Saucy Minx. indoor, CF lighting Saucy is one of those shades where a lot of swatch pics should be checked out because color-accurate pics can be tricky - there's a reason most of mine are in bright natural sunlight.  The base is a luscious cobalt blue jelly, filled with 230/Fantasy Fire red-green shifting shimmer.   outdoor, bright sunlight The fiery red of this shimmer makes Saucy pull toward violet a good bit of the time, but I promise, it's true blue and not at all "blurple." outdoor, late afternoon sunlight The shift is readily apparent, going from red to copper to bronze to gold to green, like this stuff classically does. window-filtered cloudy daylight bright afternoon daylight I think that Saucy is aiming to recreate the feel of Clarins 230/Fantasy Fire as wor...

While 230/Fantasy Fire ("unicorn pee") shifting shimmer gets the lion's share of the attention, I've tried out a few polishes lately that had a gold-green shifty shimmer that appears to be the same brightness and particle size (e.g.,  Baroness X Quixotica) .  A bottle of this other flavor of magic showed up at my house recently, and it inspired me to do a sort of tonal negative-space mani. indoor, CF lighting Girly Bits Street Magic is this lovely gold-to-green sparkling shimmer in a barely milky base (it might be in a clear base, and that's just the haze of the shimmer itself, not 100% sure).  It's a perfectly nice thickness for an effects topcoat, and I'm showing 2 layers here. window-filtered bright sunlight Street Magic is of course supposed to be used as a topcoat, and I'm sure it'd work fabulously for that as well.  The overall effect solo is that of barely-there translucent milky jade with loads of glowy embers. late afternoo...

We had a going-away party this past Friday for a coworker who I totally love, whose fave color is purple, and who has totally been a nail polish buddy.  All that together added up to sparkly purple I <3 you nails. indoor, bright CF lighting NerdLacquer Octarine is a super sparkly lavender purple, packed with tons of glassfleck and maybe microflake shimmer in at least a few colors - I see blue, pink, and gold for sure, but maybe more?  It's fully opaque in 2 coats, but the quantity of shimmer in there made it thicker than ideal, and prone to sticking to itself and pulling if the brush went by the same spot twice.  I'll definitely be thinning it before wearing again. bright window-filtered sunlight It's so bright and sparkly that it appears nearly silver in bright sunlight.  I've stamped over it using the heart pattern from the BundleMonster water marble plate, BMXL-210. early morning daylight This plate is a fave, perfectly etched, and works well ...

You have those times where you see someone else's swatches of a polish and HAVE to get it and then on you it's not so perfect?  Yeah, well... indoor, CF lighting Rescue Beauty Lounge closed their doors not too long ago, making some of their older discontinued shades even more HTF than before.  Liberty is a cool celery/verdigris green, with a subtle silvery blue shimmer, all of which is so right up my alley that this had been a lemming for a while now. window-filtered overcast daylight The shimmer was more prominent in the bottle than on the nail, with the most obvious shimmery spot being the cuticle edges after i'd cleaned up, but present enough to sparkle in the right light. outdoor, bright daylight The shade of green is a very natural and earthy-looking mint, with its muted qualities most obvious when compared to true (actual) grass green.  Cool, pretty, springtime chic in a bottle. window-filtered overcast daylight But let's talk about this he...

A friend sent me an invite to the Cirque Italia - in our area for just a couple of nights, with extremely affordable tix, it sounded like a lite version of Cirque du Soleil - so carnival-festive nails were in order. indoor, bright CF lighting Proserpine is a rich, dark teal with a subtle scattered holo - absolutely the lovely formula and finish a England consistently turns out.  It's a good bit more blue, but in the same vein, as my fave Saint George.  One thin coat was almost perfect, but I touched it up here and there with a half coat where needed.  It's nowhere near super holographic, more of a satiny shimmer of rainbow when in bright light. outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight The accent nail and the waterfall stripes are Femme Fatale Maze of Mirrors, from her recent carnival-themed Afterlight Gala collection.  It's a gorgeous pale aqua, the watery color of old glass bottles, in a golden shimmering foil finish, sprinkled with holo glitters in small and ...

Baroness X released a version of Clarins 230/Fantasy Fire as the custom for the fan group late last year, instantly making a whole bunch of best-of-2015 lists with this - apparently, the creator of the legendary "unicorn pee" pigment was lost in the Japanese tsunami of 2011, and this is some of the very last stock of the genuine article.  I've seen plenty of luscious pics in said fan group, so taking my bottle for a spin over navy blue became a must-try ASAP. indoor, CF lighting Tristam, from a England's Mythicals collection, is a rich, dreamy navy blue scattered holo.  It's got the same formula as St George, which is to say it's an utterly perfect OCW.  I dabbed a bit of Baroness X Outrè Violet Opal on the tips, then covered all with a single layer of Doomfire. window-filtered daylight In low lighting, the glitter peeked out with a very similar shifty wink as the topcoat, but it was all but lost in the blinding shine in full sunlight. outdoor,...