Sweet Baby Octopolish!

I've seen a couple of cool and creative manis dedicated to the finale of Game of Thrones, so I know I'm not alone in the excitement of this show.  As per usual, Suzy and I got together for a long weekend of shouting at the tv and binge-watching the whole thing in just a couple of days, so a themed mani was in order. window-filtered indirect daylight For the "fire" half of the theme, I started with Ever After Playing With Fire (I mean, how could I not?), a black jelly base jam-packed with gloriously flaming multichrome flakies.  I stamped in El Corazon Mysterious Mars using the amazingly textured dragon scale design from Creative Shop 47 and the Targaryen house emblem from JR-2. outdoor, direct sunlight For the "ice" half, Cameo Colors They're Here provided the perfect royal blue base.  Stamping here is the snowstorm pattern from Creative Shop 79 and the Stark house emblem on JR-2, using El Corazon white. outdoor, direct sunlight We all

indoor, CF lighting I can't remember what reminded me that it was past time for me to pull out a multichrome, but here's the lovely Tonic The Places You'll Go, part of her "May babies" duo from 2017. outdoor, direct sunlight The Places You'll Go appears to be an ILNP Sirene type shifter, tilting from green to blue to turquoise to purple.  In a rather unique twist, this is in an emerald green base rather than a neutral charcoal one.  In direct light, this polish was a gorgeous emerald green that was nearly impossible to catch on camera, since the slightest angle of the light caused the look to quickly shift to turquoise then over to purple. outdoor, direct sunlight outdoor, direct sunlight I'm wearing 3 coats here for total opacity.  Though the 3rd layer made no difference for some nails, it was needed for at least a few to have full color saturation to match the bottle.  indoor, CF lighting I was feeling like a very clean geometri

Completely breaking my tendency to switch between deep colors to lighter or more neutral ones, this go round I decided one vampy dark shade deserves another. indoor, bright CF lighing In preparation for a big Harry Potter themed collection, Pahlish released several of the polishes as test batch mysteries in 2016, and I was quite pleased with both I ended up receiving.  The Boy Who Lived is a rich royal purple packed with several different types of shimmer, and an electric blue microflake. indoor, CF lighting As you can see with the above bottle macro, the polish is fairly sheer though it's a quite saturated color.  I needed 3 coats for opacity and to build the color to the bottle shade, but test run or no, this went on smooth and easy, 100% ready for prime time. window-filtered bright sunlight It'd been a while since I wore a stamped mani, and felt like something geometric.  The man had picked "pink and green" as contrasty colors, and I nudged that a

I'm super in love with magnetic nail polish.  As long as you have the time to really hold that magnet while the top layer of polish and the topcoat set, dramatic nail art is a straightforward thing to achieve.  This particular day I painted, I had both the time and inclination to hold a magnet steady for a while, so I pulled out one of my more recent interesting acquisitions. indoor, CF lighting Bees Knees S. S. Georgie is one of a growing trend of shimmery polishes that look perfectly nice enough when worn unmagnetized, but reveal hidden elements once the shimmer particles are bunched up.  In this case, the magnetic shimmer is a pink to green multichrome that when drawn together reveals a deep slate blue base with a "UP sibling" pigment that shifts from gold to green. window-filtered bright sunlight I'm wearing 2 coats here, which was all I needed to get both even coverage of the deep base color as well as plenty of sparkle.  As usual with magnetics, I

After any really dramatic color, I have a tendency to swing back to something on the opposite end of the color spectrum, and the recent spate of sunlight meant that a sparkly holo was called for. indoor, CF lighting Femme Fatale released Upon Seafoam as part of a collection inspired by Botticelli's Venus, all of which were beautiful colors true to the painting's palette. Seafoam is exactly that - a soft, cool aqua - packed with a warm metallic pink shimmer and a shimmery scattered holo that stops juuuust short of being linear. outdoor, rainy/overcast daylight This polish changed its look in different lighting, appearing a little more pale or a little more saturated depending on the angle (see above).  My swatch photos, as with the way it looked IRL were quite soft and pale as compared to the official swatch pics at the time this was launched in 2016.  I don't think my bottle is faded, though, because my swatch stick made at the time I bought it are the same shad

A couple of months ago, a polish sorceress/horrible enabler in one of my fb groups tipped me off to the magic that is Indigo Bananas' custom for a now defunct group called This Shift is Bananas.  Do I need yet another Clarins 230-infused purple polish?  Obviously, hell yes. indoor, bright CF lighting Yeeeaaaahhhhh, there's going to be a lot of pics of this business right here. bright sunlight When you ask nail aficionados what the ideal base is for "unicorn pee" shimmers, the clear top winners are royal purple, saturated cobalt blue, or straight up black - cool, dark bases really allow all of the prominent colors of this pigment's shift, from red to bronze to green, to really pop.  This Shift is Bananas manages to hit a sweet spot in between all 3 with a dark, smoky eggplant purple.  It's truly unique in my stash, and is a deliciously vampy but very wearable color. indoor, bright CF lighting In bright indoor lighting and of course in sunlig

I've been really inspired lately to do themed nails for my book club, and my recent pick of Patricia McKillip's World Fantasy Award winner The Forgotten Beasts of Eld practically demanded a mani based on the beautiful fantasy imagery. This amazingly beautiful book tells the story of a dark-eyed, ivory-haired sorceress and the menagerie of magical animals that share her home.  Selecting a theme for this design was easy, and fortunately my love of fantastic themed plates is just as strong as my love of fantasy books, so there were plenty of plates to pull from. Throughout this mani, I've used the dragon scales from MM21 - as with my handful of other Messy Mansion plates, this is amazingly well-etched and gives zero grief with lifting images.  Also on my left hand, I have the black cat's eye from Marianne Professional No 20 and the sorceress' swirling hair and solemn gaze from Creative Shop 28, and these two are also fantastic plates. My right hand ha

Bee's Knees has been releasing one stunner after another, with really interesting things in mystery bags and regular releases alike.  This pretty was still sitting on my mani table, ready to be filed away into the drawer that holds all my Clarins 230-type shifty shimmer polishes, and demanded to be worn first instead. indoor, CF lighting Bee's Knees released Our Lord Uncanny originally as a former mystery polish, but then brought back the fan faves for direct purchase last month.  It's described as a "grape purple" and does indeed look purple in the bottle, but on the nail, Uncanny is closer to fuchsia or wine.  The holo sparkles evident in the bottle shot are very much on the nail as well, but while they were described as small glitters, they laid flat and came off without any scrubbing at all. window-filtered daylight Translucent blue-green-aqua flakies are more apparent in the bottle than on the nail, also, so all in all this is a polish that looks