Sweet Baby Octopolish!

My life is in more than a little bit of an upheaval - my car is crapping out hard core which has made my every waking priority researching a new one, I just came back from a lovely trip with my sister and am busy planning a big overseas trip before the end of the year with a friend, my major annual conference is coming up almost simultaneously with my dad visiting - not all of it bad things, but everything is way more hectic than usual around here.  My posts aren't on my regular twice-weekly schedule, and that's because I'm not painting my nails twice weekly.  Sometimes life just rearranges your priorities, and when this usually fun and relaxing hobby becomes a stressor, well, I'm kinda taking a step back for a while. indoor, bright CF lighting That doesn't mean my nails are going nekkid, that means I'm not as on-the-ball about getting plenty of good photos, I'm wearing each mani longer than I normally would, and my posts will probably be shorter than ...

Once or twice per year, Femme Fatale announces a sample sale.  This used to be a battle royale situation, with everyone in the fan group trying to shout "first" on a photo of the one you wanted, but recently Sophie has instead taken to selling them as sight-unseen mysteries where you only select the color family.  So far, I'm still super pleased with the ones that I've gotten. indoor, bright CF lighting The Dark Star is perfectly named - vampy and dark, yet brightly twinkling in little flashes.  This is a deep wine colored jelly dusted in tiny bronze holographic microglitters and overlaid with a turquoise blue shimmer.  I have several blue-in-bruise polishes, and this is a fave color combo of mine. window-filtered daylight The different elements here mean this is one of those polishes that has something lovely going on for it in all sorts of lighting conditions.  In lower light, the bronze glitters flash out of the vampy base, while in brighter light...

After all the flaming red loveliness that I was last wearing, I decided that a neutral palate cleanser was in order.  I wore Dance Legend's Robots vs Humans once when it first came out, but never blogged it, so this seemed like a good time to revisit this one. indoor, bright CF lighting Dance Legend made a huge splash in nail polish world with their 2013 New Prism collection - these were some of the first more widely available holos, and they were really the first to go on creamy smooth without the need to paint on bare nail or a special aqua basecoat. Robots vs Humans is a warm copper-brown that goes on nearly opaquely in just one coat, and is completely solid in one and a half to two.  It's pigmented enough to use for stamping, and I swooned over that amazing holo flare in the bottle there. indoor, bright CF lighting Sadly, though, wearing it again reminded me of all the issues I had with this color the first time around - though my painting technique and base/to...

I managed to miss Magma both times Baroness X released it as a custom for her facebook group, but thankfully Suzy had a spare she was willing to let fall into my grabby little hands, because HOT DAMN if this isn't one of my absolute all time fave reds EVER. indoor, bright CF lighting Hold on y'all, there's going to be a whole lot of pics. indoor, bright CF lighting Magma is a devastatingly gorgeous true red jelly filled with that magically shifty red-gold-green Clarins 230 type shimmer that I swoon over.  As with her other FB group customs of this type, Demi makes a UP-less jelly to use as undies if you'd like to conserve the magic in this bottle; I like to live dangerously, so this is 3 thin coats of Magma all on its own. indoor, CF lighting Though the red base has no shifting properties of its own, its interactions with the shimmer meant that this color looked quite different on me in different lighting, sometimes candy apple red, sometimes a bi...

I recently got a Helmer (the nearly universally agreed-on ideal storage option for polish fiends everywhere), and while my stash is arranged by color, I decided to pull out a few particular types of polish to file in these new drawers.  This decision was partially launched by the fact that it takes at least twice as long to do a magnetic mani as it does to simply paint your nails - I might as well have all the magnetics in one spot when I have enough time to play with them, like I did for this look. Indoor, bright CF lighting But first, the gorgeous base color by itself!  Tonic released Quasi Stellar as part of a galaxy-themed collab box last year, and while usually only one polish in a box catches my eye, this trio was all fantastic.  Quasi Stellar is a deep navy blue base, liberally scattered with holo flake, then overlaid with a ton of duochromatic shimmer that shifts from sapphire (above) to purple (below). indoor, CF lighting Tonic more recentl...