Sweet Baby Octopolish!

My last of this month's nail art challenge prompts was "frogs."  There was a gorgeous manicure posted for PPU a few months ago that had me purchasing both the beautiful lime green stamping polish and the plate with the cute frog design, and I considered just remaking the same one, but then found another untried polish that needed love. indoor, bright CF lighting At last year's Tonic prototype sale, I'd received a pretty multichrome that I swapped for this bright lime green UP proto.  It's unlabeled with number or working title, and just has the gold unicorn face sticker that she used to label the ones with that Clarins 230 type shimmer. outdoor, sunlight This proto is a sheer jelly polish with plenty of sparkle.  Noticing how sheer it was inspired me to use it like an old-skool jelly for a pond mani.  The idea behind these is that you sandwich a dot or shape in white polish between layers of the jelly, where they highlight the translucency as the c...

I'm still playing with the nail art challenge prompts on facebook, and while " ladybugs " had me reaching for colors & plates right away, the other ones need a bit more thinking about to come up with a design that I like. For this round, I'm working on "penguins"...hmmm... indoor, CF lighting I've started with Ethereal Lacquer Ophidia, a recent jewel from PPU.  It's a very soft, sheer off-white that's absolutely loaded with aurora shimmer to give the look of iridescent snakeskin.  You could probably use this as a topper in one thick coat, as long as you picked a color where the impact of the milky base would look nice. outdoor, afternoon sunlight Most typically, aurora and Clarins 230-type toppers and polishes are done in darker bases to really make the transition from red to bronze to green pop.  Ophidia still shows that shift beautifully, but it's a more subtle, gauzy, fairy-like way that's very much in keeping with Ethe...

I've been having fun playing with nail art challenge prompts lately, but one that stumped me from the start was simply the color orange.  Orange and yellow are just not my jam, and I have only a small amount of either specifically for nail art.  Pondering that reminded me I'd picked up an orange crème polish late last year in case of Halloween needs, and a google images search gave me plenty of ways to make orange more appealing to me . bright afternoon sunlight For a first attempt after watching this inspo video , which had a gorgeous look but no how-to pointers, I absolutely love how this came out. indoor, bright CF lighting On my stamper head, I've dry brushed first in Flormar Coral Red, which is neither of those things, but instead a bright sunny orange crème.  After that, there's a few swipes of Dance Legend Triumph, a dusty navy jelly with holo flake.  Finally, I lightly covered the whole thing with one coat of a medium aqua shimmer polish. brig...

Pulling Asylum out of my stash this past week reminded me that I'd originally bought it just a couple of months after Tonic polish released their amazing Dryad's Grove in a collab box.  I wanted the Tonic very much, but had no interest in the rest of the polishes, and unfortunately that was the case for a whole lot of people - prices quickly soared on the secondhand market.  Another month or so later, and Great Lakes Lacquer released O'Rlyeh?, another gorgeous green in the same vein.  I also managed to snap up a bottle of Enchanted's Holiday LE from 2014 from a destash.  And then last year, Tonic sent another few dozen bottles of Dryad's Grove out into the world as part of a mystery bag sale. indoor, CF lighting All swatches go in order of the bottle shots here: Index: Glitter Daze Asylum Middle:  Tonic Dryad's Grove Ring:  Great Lakes Lacquer O'Rlyeh? Pinky:  Enchanted Polish Holiday 2014 So right up front:  none of these are 100% ...

After last week's flurry of inspiration with that Creative Shop plate, I kinda ran out of steam.  Fortunately, a few nail polish fb groups do monthly or weekly challenges, including an April prompt for ladybug-themed designs. indoor, bright CF lighting I've started with 3 coats of Glitter Daze Asylum, which was released back in 2017 for Hella Handmade (or was it still Hella Holo back then??).  Asylum is a beautiful forest green linear holo that's also duochromatic.  outdoor, bright sunlight In bright light, of course, the sparkling rainbow arc takes center stage, with the slightly sheer jelly-type formula allowing all the light-bending elements to shine through easily. outdoor, bright sunlight The contrast shimmer in Asylum never completely takes it over - this is not duochrome where the shifting colors are the whole reason to be - but is more a supporting part.  It's always definitively green, but the center of the holo flame is filled in with...

A swatch photo in the Vapid fan group reminded me that Witching Hour is awfully pretty in a deep, dark, vampy way... and a cool effects topcoat from Dance Legend was just languishing untried, so... indoor, bright CF lighting Yes!  Slytherin nails!   First layers first: indoor, bright CF lighting Witching Hour is a deep inky off-black base with very fine-milled purple shimmer.  The bottle catches more shimmer for me than my nails do, and this is indeed one of those polishes that looks black in moderate light on down, but that was wholly expected from the get go.  It's completely opaque in 2 coats, but cleanup can be dicey if this ink gets at your cuticle egde. indoor, bright CF lighting The morning after I'd painted this, I wanted my vampy look to have more flash than just a creature of the night, and since the base layer was totally dry, it seemed a great time to try out one of Dance Legend's magnetic top coats. outdoor, bright d...

Somewhen last week I decided to engage in my own personal challenge of using Creative Shop 50 several times over, coming up with a different look each go - this is round 4, and I haven't decided completely if I'm done just yet. indoor, bright CF lighting LynBDesigns released Space Gandalf as part of a 2013 Doctor Who series, and when I wore it back then I gave this glitterbomb 4 stars.  It started as a deep, smoky deep-space navy, but I think it may have faded just a bit in the intervening years, because it now looks smoky black even on the first thin coat. outdoor, bright morning sunlight Within the midnight blue-black base is a whole starfield of holo glitters, plus both diamond and moon-shaped larger glitters.  The formula is fairly thick to suspend all that, but behaves very well, applying right where you put it, without balding if you tend to overwork things a little to get those moons to spread out and lay down flat. indoor, bright CF lighting This poli...

In these times of uncertainty, I've enjoyed painting maybe a little more often, trying to do more nail art than new polish swatches, and Creative Shop 50 keeps being amazing. window-filtered shady daylight CS 50 is a smorgasbord of nature-themed images, from insects to leaf veins to organic geometrics to exotic mammals: credit to Creative Shop I started with the beetles, then moved on to the swirling nexus, and for this look used the rough-textured lines on the top center. Are they tiger stripes or flames or wood grain?  Who knows?  Either way, I love CS plates, and no matter how finely detailed the images are I get consistently good pickup and clarity. outdoor, bright direct sunlight This is one and a half coats of my trusty Nana Coco Love Black, stamped in El Corazon Kaleidoscope True Red (which amazingly stamps right over black with zero issues), and matted with Vapid's Onward Through the Fog. Where to buy:  grab CS plates direct from her store or f...