Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Magnetic polishes are super trendy right now, and as if gorgeously flashing cat's eye shine wasn't enough, several of my fave makers turning out really interesting combinations of shimmer + flakes + holo effects in their new magnetics.  For the past few months, Shleee Polish has sprinkled some of these interestingly complex magnetics into her weekly releases, and this was the bottle I immediately thought of with the "blue + sci-fi" challenge theme I've been working on lately. indoor, bright CF lighting Cosmological is easily one of the most accurately-named polishes in my whole stash.  Before the magnet hits it (or in the bottle, or on the first coat), it's an inky, smoky navy blue with a dusting of holo sparkle, microscopic red glitters, and a pretty purple duochrome flash. indoor, bright CF lighting The magnet draws most, but not all, of the blue shimmer toward it, leaving behind that inky, near-black base spangled with the holo and microglitter...

For my second round of blues, I switched up to a bright, saturated true-blue, with Heather's Hues The Deepest Kind of Love. indoor, bright CF lighting March's Polish Pick-Up theme was books, and this one takes its inspiration from 'Where the Red Fern Grows,' which as a life-long animal lover and book nerd I'm sheepishly admitting that I've never read. window-filtered overcast daylight Deepest is a gorgeous cobalt blue jelly filled with green iridescent flakes of both standard flakie & microflake sizes.  I think there's also a shimmer in there that's somewhat duochromatic - there's a very obvious purple shift in the bottle, but the below pic is as close as I ever came to seeing it on the nail. window-filtered afternoon daylight Blue polishes are often described as having a sulphuric odor to them, which I rarely notice - this one has a subtle whiff, but nowhere near enough to be off-putting indoor, bright CF lighting As with...

One of my facebook groups has a prompt for the month of June of sci-fi nails in blue, and with that focusing my aim toward one particular part of my untried mountain, it's more than past time for me to rifle through my blues... indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish keeps getting me with both her aesthetic and her inspiration choices.  It's Unlike Us is a quote from and a nod to the inhuman presence inside "the shimmer" (omg polish pun!) from the film 'Annihilation'.  It's a dusky, greyed denim blue filled to the brim with red-to-copper-to-gold aurora shimmer, and dusted wish scattered holo particles. outdoor, bright sunlight The shimmer here truly changes the polish based on the lighting conditions.  In bright light as above, I saw a bright band of contrasting shimmer shining as a stripe down the center of the darker base, rocking that "glowing from within" thing.  In lower light as below, the shimmer really blended into the base,...

With the fantastic weather this week, I was feeling summery-bright, the man voted for red polish, and this beauty was sitting on my mani table having just arrived... indoor, CF lighting As far as my sleuthing around the interwebs could illuminate, Illyrian released Prototype 99 as a 2017 Black Friday LE that also ended up going to a couple stockists.  It's a super subtle duochrome of the sort that looks different in different lighting, but doesn't show any shift on the nail. window-filtered bright daylight Overall, it's a cool-toned berry red, and the bottle color where it's closer to magenta is just as color accurate as the blazing scarlet in this sun shot.  There's also a light dusting of aurora pigment in there that had a sparkling lime green flash in the bottle, but again, not obvious on the nail as a shift, but as a component of the lush glow.  99 had a nicely behaved formula that was 100% opaque in 2 coats. outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight ...

~~*  Press Sample  *~~ I'm still all kinds of excited about the gorgeous toppers that Baroness X sent me, and today I'm sharing the holo version of Baroness X Wildfire. indoor, bright CF lighting And that's another resounding OH YESSSS. As a reminder, Wildfire is described as double UP in a tinted base, with matching UP flakies.  This holo version adds a handful of super fine holographic particles, what I usually refer to as "holo dust" - this is not glitter, it's not hard to remove, and it doesn't grey out the base color of the polish you're wearing with it.  Holo dust adds a delicate rainbow sparkle, not a linear holo flame that would compete with the red-to-green shifty shimmer. outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight I wanted to swatch Wildfire Holo over something a little more unusual than the typical black, but also wanted to keep the dark base color to really make those Unicorn Pee shimmers *pop*.  Magnetic polishes with f...

I absolutely loved my last Masura magnetic polish - it was super easy to work with, very reactive, and wore well.  I have one more super shifty Baroness X topcoat to share, and wanted to choose something a little unusual to swatch it over, and this ended up being the perfect choice indoor, bright CF lighting Condiments & Spices is a deep, cool, smoky brown shimmer in the bottle, and much like Mint & Basil , would be plenty pretty on its own if you didn't feel like using a magnet.  One caveat - while C&S applied perfectly smoothly, this dried in an irregularly patchy satin pattern that a single layer of topcoat smoothed right back out (in other words, topcoat is a necessity for this polish).  I used my newest super strong neodymium magnet  held in a diagonal across each nail to attract the pearly shimmer particles.  I'd bought this magnet after a recommendation that this was more powerful than my standby Dance legend flat bar magnet, and th...

One of my FB nail groups has been blowing up lately with bright summery designs using foaming polishes for fluid nail art.  My 3 bottles of these special effects polish are underused, but despite the prodigious volume of nail polish in this house, I'm always hesitant to try out techniques that involve using huge quantities of polish or pouring it straight out of the bottle (!!).  indoor, bright CF lighting While the stamper technique to get the cells to form worked well for me last time , this round was all about watching a half dozen tutorials like this one where polish was dabbed, dripped, or poured onto a silicone nail art mat, the mat was folded, and POOF cells foam right on up.  That insta video is exactly how I did this one, including the use of a single thin coat of one of the base colors painted onto each nail for the decals to stick onto. outdoor, bright sunlight I also managed to get over my aversion to pouring out polish by using stuff that I'm oth...

~~* Press Sample *~~ I was all aflutter when the wizard behind Baroness X asked me to swatch her latest custom for The X Army Facebook group, and was even more aflutter when I opened the package to find this beauty (and her holo sister) inside! indoor, bright CF lighting Awwww yessssss. Wildfire is described as "double UP in a tinted base with matching UP flakies," and that seems dead accurate to my eyes.  I'm wearing just one layer here over a plain slate-teal crème (Essie's Go Overboard), which was plenty to show off the shifty goodness.  I was also in love enough with the smoky sky blue bottle color to want to show how it did on its own, so my accent nail is one layer of Wildfire, then stamping an octopus motif from MoYou London's Animal 01 plate with Go Overboard, then one more coat of Wildfire.  I'm wearing a single layer of topcoat over everything. window-filtered overcast daylight In lower light, the flakies are super prominent and ...