Sweet Baby Octopolish!

After a couple of deep, saturated jewel tones and while I was pondering what to wear next, the man suggested silver.  A-ha, an untried Femme Fatale sample was filed under silver! indoor, bright CF lighting Femme Fatale occasionally (once or twice per year) releases samples that were prototypes, studies, or things that just never fit into a collection.  I have a handful of gorgeous one of a kind polishes from these sample sales, and always grab another 2 or 3 when the opportunity comes up.  window-filtered overcast daylight Geralt is sample number 82 from the June 2017 sale.  It's a warm tarnished silver with bronze contrast shimmer, linear holo, and the teeny holo glitters that are signature Femme Fatale.  The quantity of bronze shimmer meant that this often read like old gold or even light brown, especially since once I put it on all the glorious sunshine we had evaporated into rainy overcast for days. window-filtered overcast daylight The for...

I think we all know that I'm a complete sucker for polishes that contain shifting Clarins 230-type pigment, or any of the so-called "UP sisters," and when a fortunate happenstance was sitting on my desk along with this beauty, well, it jumped right to the front of the line. indoor, CF lighting Bee's Knees recently released a whole collection of UP and sister UP polishes themed around the Seven Wonders that the witches perform in season 3 of American Horror Story, each named for a different act of magic from the show.  Concilium is a plummy eggplant purple jelly, loaded with a green to blue shifting shimmer. outdoor, bright sunlight For some of her other sheer polishes of this type, Bee's Knees has also offered matching undies in a more opaque crème or crelly formula, though I generally prefer the squishy translucency of jellies on their own.  This polish does build up in about 4 coats, though, so was sold solo.  By luck, another polish that arrived on ...

I had time this past weekend to play around with magnetic polishes, so pulled out Femme Fatale's first magnetic effort ever. indoor, CF lighting Amanita was part of the December 2018 "Enchanted Forest" PPU, and has a whole lot going on in this bottle.  The deep sapphire blue jelly base is filled with iridescent flakies, a dusting of aurora shimmer, and a metallic green magnetic shimmer. window-filtered overcast daylight Also sold with that round of PPU was a new  "top coat for magnetic polishes" from DRK nails, which promised to "help you achieve a great magnetic effect even with weaker magnetic polishes."  When I held my strongest magnet to Amanita's bottle, I could easily get the mixing balls to snap right up to the glass, but after lots of shaking I still got only the most subtle magnetic line in the bottle.  To be fair, the listing from Femme Fatale did say that it was intended as a "medium" magnetic effect, not a super dr...

Halloween may be over, but I'm now totally in the mood for warm, rich fall colors, so when the man suggested red, I grabbed a deep, dark one. indoor, bright CF lighting Mercury in Retrograde, from the 2018 April PPU, is so far my only Supernatural Lacquer.  This beauty is a slightly blackened red with scattered holo and ultrachome flakies thrown in. outdoor, overcast daylight It also has a fairly amazing coppery shift when the light hits just right. indoor, CF lighting I'm wearing 2 coats here, which brought this to complete opacity.  The formula was slightly thicker than I usually like, but it leveled perfectly and stayed where I put it without pooling or running, so I'll call the thickness a plus here. outdoor, overcast daylight It's the sort of thing that has a slightly different appearance in all lighting conditions, with either the flakies or the duochrome effect or the holo shining a little brighter in turn. indoor, CF lighting outd...

I wanted my last Halloween look to match up to a super cute shirt I just picked up, which has a spiderweb design on the collar and sleeves.  As soon as I saw this fantastic design by Tiana Locket , I instantly knew I had to do something similar for one of my Halloween looks, so here goes! outdoor, afternoon daylight for all pics The beautifully shifty base here is three coats of ILNP Peace, a gorgeously vampy multichrome that I rather liked the first time I wore it .  One to two coats over black would have given the same oomph, but I usually prefer these shifters to shine on their own.  Case in point about the black base:  my accent nails started with a single sheer coat of Glitter Gal Light as a Feather, then a steeply curved french tip from Maniology M053 first in black, then with 2 stamped coats of Peace.  It's only in specific lighting angles that I could tell the difference over black vs solo, but by itself, Peace was a lot easier to clean up....