Sweet Baby Octopolish!

And now that fall has been started & celebrated, I'm of course right back to colors appropriate to whatever season, because that's how I roll. outdoor, bright sunlight Tonic Deep Sea-Crets is a luscious aqua that sits somewhere between teal and cornflower blue - most of the time, it leaned more teal for me, and I have this filed as a teal polish, but in certain lighting it went way over to blue.  The bottle shot below is a bit too blue, but it did look close to this IRL infrequently. indoor, bright CF lighting - NB this is a hair too blue, photo is NOT color corrected Deep Sea-Crets ends up looking like a crème with a rich contrasty shimmer, but the formula is much more crelly-type sheer to let all that shimmer shine boldly in most all lighting conditions.  Though the color was completely even and smooth at 2 coats, I could see more VNL than I'd like, so 3 coats were needed to get everything fully opaque.  Each coat was just a touch sticky - don't over-m...

This week saw the first day of autumn, which is not a huge transition after our mild summer, but I have loads of leafy stamping plates and fall colors that I wanted to jump on. indoor, bright CF lighting Lacquester Song From a Vampire is a lovely shade of wine that I'm wearing here in 2 coats.  The formula has good consistency, and flows smoothly, but Lacquester has that wide brush that I do not like, because it created more cleanup than this formula would otherwise need. indoor, bright CF lighting In the bottle, you can glimpse a gorgeous array of pretty flakes and a scattering of holo dust, but the flakes were more subtle on the nail in the bright lamp light of my mani cave.  I wanted FFLLLAAAAKKKESSS, so I've added 1 coat Essie Shine of the Times and 1 coat Sinful Colors All About You to create a thick wall of tiny falling leaves on the wine base - all pics shown with this layering combo, none of Vampire alone. outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight Though the...

With well over a hundred untrieds (!!!), I often ask for color suggestions from the Mr to narrow things down.  This time, my "pick a color please" text was answered with, "indigo."  I thought that was awfully specific, but, well, there really were only a few bottles that met that exacting criteria. outdoor, bright sunlight I remember gasping when i first pulled this bottle out of the shipping package, and indeed I did again with the first nail done.  Sweet baby octopus, look at that color!  Cirque Tanzanite is several shades deeper than even Klein or true cobalt blue, lusciously saturated, and packed with those sterling siver flakies that Cirque does so well.  It's an enormous thumbs up from me (and, yes, the man as well). indoor, bright CF lighting Tanzanite, like others of this silver flakie type Cirque does, gave excellent coverage in one coat, and would be fine as a one-coater if you do thicker coats than I do.  I've used  2 here to cat...

After all the efforts of fluid art decals, I wanted something a bit more simple, and pulled out Glitter Daze Versailles. indoor, bright CF lighing Versailles is a densely packed assortment of ultra-chrome flakes, predominantly green with flashes of gold and blue, suspended in a sparkling scattered holo base.  Overall, the color effect was that of old US dollar bills - that slightly faded, earthy green over beige-green.  The formula on this was utterly flawless, with smooth, perfect flakie distribution.  It was beautiful at one coat and very probably could be worn as a topper.  Despite the overall light color and subtly sheer look at one coat, the base became more milky opaque at 2, which I'm wearing here. indoor, bright CF lighting After wearing this for a couple of days, I stamped with Esmaltes da Kelly Wendy using a wavy spiral design from Uber Chic 6-01. outdoor, indirect sunlight Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  The formula was amazing and ...

Last year, Dance Legend released a handful of colors in their Spot It line that were supposed to cause cool foamy bubbles when used as a topcoat over wet polish.  Genius Russian bloggers were able to get spectacular results with this stuff ( seriously, watch the video because she makes it look suuuuper easy ), but my one attempt on a swatch stick was a total fail.  Flash forward to this year, when Sinful colors released their own version, and BOOM fluid nail art has really taken off. outdoor, bright sunlight I made a swatch stick with Dance Legend Spot It White when I first got it, painting directly over a wet black base using a technique like what was in that Russian video.  It ended up as a streaky white wash over the black base - no foamy look, no bubbles, dud.  After the Sinful polishes blew this trend up, folks came up with several ways to get the "cells" to form in wet polish, so I revisited DL Spot It White, and got the super cool results you see above. ...

This week, me and the Mr celebrated our 10 year anniversary - we're both bonkers in our own special ways, so this is absolutely a big deal that called for a super fancy night out, though neither one of us is typically sentimental about dates.  Well, that fancy dinner out called for something special on my nails, so... indoor, CF lighting Baroness X has been releasing exclusives for her Facebook fan group about once per year or so, and they're all stunning jellies packed with the Clarins 230-type shifty shimmer.  Obsidian was the 2016 group custom, a jet black glass that completely lives up to its name. outdoor, bright sunlight As is typical for Baroness X's style for these polishes, Obsidian is quite sheer, going on as a smoky haze full of blazing embers when worn solo as one coat.  It's possible to build this up in 3-4 coats, but I wanted opaque BLACK, not jelly squish.  I'm wearing 1 coat of Glitter Gal Serpent Black, then 2 of Obsidian here. outdo...

This week, I hit the zoo with my coworkers for a sorta teambuilding event... but really, wine tasting at the zoo!  Themed nails were clearly called for, and i could either go with wine or zoo, but the animals won. First, I painted one single perfect coat of Jade Extasy, a light silvery blue linear holo.  Side note, UGH do I miss Jade.  These are rather small bottles, but the formula is just perfection, seriously no cleanup needed, and BAM look at that rainbow!  Then I used a handful of different stamping polishes and the CJS-15 plate - it's called "Out of Africa" on their web page, but labeled only with the number on the plate. As with other Clear Jelly Stamper plates I've tried, the images are really detailed but very small. These plates always look bigger than reality on the web store, but even the smallest nails will have no problem finding room for an animal on each one, and long or broad nails could easily fit a safari's worth per nail.  My nails ...

This past July, the theme of For the Love of Polish was "galaxy," and while the other 2 polishes in that box got a lot of buzz, the deep navy from Polished for Days was the first one that caught my eye. indoor, CF lighting Polished for Days is a new-to-me brand, and this first try was a real winner.  Milky Way is a deep dark (but never black!) navy blue that is absolutely filled with ruby red shimmer, enough so that the look at arm's length tilts decidedly toward purple.  In my mind, this is OPI Russian Navy with the shimmer dialed all the way up to 11. indoor, bright CF lighting I'm wearing this in 2 coats, though it was aaaaaaaaalmost a 1 coater.  Milky Way has an excellent formula of ideal thickness that stays where you put it, with no cuticle pooling - pretty critical for something this dark that would be otherwise difficult to clean up. Obviously, a navy blue background that's already showcasing a red flash prompted the need to top this with som...