Sweet Baby Octopolish!

For my last all Halloween all October mani, my inspiration came straight from a fantastic pair of leggings that featured multichrome bats on a black background. indoor, office fluorescents First up, these walmart leggings were both inexpensive and insanely comfortable - I'm hugely grateful to the lady in one of my FB groups that tipped me off to them! I'm wearing 2 coats of Glitter Gal Serpent Black - it's a crelly, so needs 2 coats for total opacity, but the formula is very easy to work with, dries to a high piano-black shine even sans topcoat, and has a small, thin brush that keeps paint off my cuticles.  Yeah, I have to dip the brush twice per nail, but precision painting means I can skip the headache of scrubbing black out of my nail sidewalls, so I'm cool with that. indoor, bright CF lighting I've stamped with bats from 3 different Halloween plates I had with bats on them - the more shapes, the better!  The bats are done in El Corazon Mysteriou...

One good ILNP of course deserves another, so more shifty shimmers for all Halloween all month! indoor, bright CF lighting ILNP Clever Girl is a cool, soft grey that's warmed up to a concrete tone due to the masses of bronze-gold chunky shimmer filling the crelly-style base.  I can see some VNL in macro shots here, but that wasn't the case IRL, the shimmer was enough to have this looking opaque at 2 coats. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight In low lighting, the scattered holo flake gave Clever Girl a subtly speckled appearance, and the gold shimmer almost completely vanished.  Formula was great on this, and ILNP's brush never gives me any grief - super smooth, dried evenly, wore nicely. indoor, bright CF lighting In any kind of regular to bright light, though, the shimmer wasn't at all shy, and was a nearly metallic zing on top of the creamy grey base.  In brighter light, the silver holo flake vanished, leaving only a rainbow sparkle, but no speckling....

Since I was off to a conference this week, I kept my Halloween mani just a little more subtle, and based on a color that's just drop-dead gorgeous on its own. indoor, bright CF lighing ILNP released Ava as part of this year's Fall collection, and as soon as I opened the box it leapt to the top of the "must try ASAP" list.  It's a gorgeous purple jelly with a rather chameleon personality - the base itself is more violet, while the heavy copper shimmer warms things up to an overall plum shade.  It's also scattered with some holo flake, and ooooh look at that flash of contrasting rainbow around the bottom edge of the bottle! indoor, bright CF lighting Oh yes, that sweetness is showing just the suggestion of an rich emerald green flash.  Most all of my pics trying to catch the emeralds ended up unusably blurry, but it's there, peeking through the vines that surround this jack-o-lantern: outdoor, bright afternoon light I've stamped her...

Today, we have what became my absolute fave design of this month's all Halloween all October on my nails! indoor, CF lighting One of the ladies in my Facebook stamping group posted a fantastic black & white Halloween mani with stylized graphic designs that I had to immediately put my own spin on.  I've used a base of 2 coats of Pretty Serious Absence, stamped with bat designs in MoYou London Galaxy and fanged vampire lips in Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn using XXL-3, a huge stamping plate mostly full of sugar skulls.  The Rocky Horror vibe from the lips is adorable, and I was surprised to find so many different bats hidden all over this stamping plate TOTAL DARKNESS In between the white base and the graphic stamping, I've sandwiched a layer of green glow from a very, very old bottle of Wet N Wild glow in the dark polish.  Seriously, this stuff is from college in the 90s!  It needed a few drops of thinner to keep the texture flowing nicely and get r...

Continuing all Halloween all month on my nails, my first stamped design was about as witchy as I could go, witches on witches! indoor, bright CF lighting CrowsToes Season of the Witch is an old fave of mine;  sometimes in the push to get through this mountain of untried polish, it's really nice to pick up something I loved a few years ago and see if it's still as amazing as I remember.  Spoiler alert - hell yes it is. indoor, bright CF lighting Season of the Witch is a smoky off-black jelly filled with duochromatic micro-flakies that shift from a deep emerald-jade when viewed directly to a plummy fuchsia at angles.  It's a touch streaky and patchy at the first coat, evens out very nicely on the second, and comes to the level of opacity you see here at 3 coats. outdoor, bright sunlight I've stamped here using Born Pretty silver stamping polish and BundleMonster's BM-S242 witch-themed plate from last year's Halloween collection.  I LOVE that high...

Now that October is up and running, it's time for all Halloween all month on my nails!  First up, a subtle nod to the season in black & purple.. outdoor, bright sunlight Parrot Polish Apache Princess is a black scattered holo base with rich, royal purple magnetic pigment - the end result is bands of witchy purple across a black starfield after you use the magnet, or a blackened purple if left plain and unmagnetized. indoor bright CF lighting - NB this is slightly too blue-violet, NOT color corrected As with some purples, my camera didn't play nice in indoor lighting - the above bottle shot is a hair too blue-tinted, while the below pic with flash is more accurate.  All the hand pics sans bottles are correct to my eyes, though the contrast between purple and black was as boldly obvious as in the flash pic, not as subtle as some of these shots show. flash to show true color and that holo sparkle For anyone new to magnetic polishes, the trick is to do one th...

The now apparently defunct Emerald & Ash started an April Fool's day joke a couple of years ago with a polish called Period Poops.  It got such an enthusiastic thumbs-up that they brought it back once a month for about a week (get it?  hahahahaha), making this the most hilarious polish in my stash. indoor, CF lighting Period Poops (and hooboy, that name, haha or cringe depending on your personal capacity for embarrassment!) is a rich chocolate to espresso (decidedly not at all fecal) brown with a lightly scattered holo effect and sparse ruby red microglitters.  I could easily see the glitters in the bottle, but not so much on the nail - they were there if I knew to look for them, but at arm's length they were invisible.  The formula was a bit thicker than ideal, but I got completely opaque coverage in 2 coats. outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight I've stamped here using El Corazon white for the trunks and Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn & Esmaltes da...