Shleee Cosmological

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 sparks.  POOF.  Instant deep space starfield, with an overlay of nebula clouds.

outdoor, bright sunlight

^^^^^^^^ OH HELL YES ^^^^^^^^

window-filtered overcast daylight

Cosmological was nicely opaque in 2 coats and required pretty minimal cleanup - formula on here was approximately perfect, the brush was ideal, and the polish was super reactive in the bottle.  Instead of using one of my standard fave neodymium bar magnets, I tried out one I got very inexpensively from Shleee that has parallel wavy lines.  It's nowhere near as powerful a magnet, and while multiple lines showed up with ease on the flat bottle surface, the vast majority of my curved surfaced nails ended up with only a single really prominent wave down the middle.  Ultimately, that worked out just fine for me, creating a single galaxy spiral-type swirl to arrange my stamping around.

outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight

To make this as outer-spacey as possible, I stamped using Emily de Molly silver holo stamping polish and the smorgasbord of small accent images from Bundle Monster's Kelli Marissa collab plate BM-XL213.

outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight

When the magnetic shimmer in Cosmological isn't being sapphire blue, it flips to a deep grape purple.  It's a true duochrome (just those 2 colors and not others in between or more at extreme angles), but easily shifty.  If magnetic polishes just aren't your thing, this would still be gorgeous as 2 coats solo, or one over black.

outdoor, bright sunlight, the one nail that got 2 really good parallel waves

Rating:  5 out of 5 stars, hands down one of my fave magnetics.  Between the reflective cat's eye flash inherent to magnetic shimmers and the duochrome flip, this is the kind of polish that has me staring at my hands all the time.  The fantastic glints of color from the red glitters and the holo dust compliment but don't at all overwhelm the utterly cool deep space effect.  Cosmological went on great, looked great, and then wore great to boot - what's not to love?

Where to buy:  sadly this one is no longer in stock on Shleee's storefront, but cross your fingers it'll make an appearance at Girly Bits, or hunt destashes.

~Michelle