Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Completely out of the blue, someone asked the nail polish comparisons group if anyone had ever found a dupe for Cirque Coronation.  While I now have and love that one, I pulled out all my royal purple Clarins 230-type shimmer polishes, and remembered all of these are stunning.  indoor, CF lighting Dance Legend's Sparky collection was released a year before Cirque brought back Coronation, and though I can't really find any of the comparisons online now, the royal purple + holo sparkle + "unicorn pee" shimmer that is Post Scriptum was hailed as pretty darn close.  outdoor, shady daylight My swatch sticks at 2 coats showed the two of them to be aaaaalmost dupes... but this isn't a comparison post, because at this point I'm not actually sure if one is harder to find than the other, so I'm going to focus just on the merits of Post Scriptum by itself.  outdoor, bright sunlight And what a royal purple this is!  As with many polishes in this vein, PS is sheer enou...

 Apparently I'm not quite done with soft shades, because when the man picked blue for my next color, I didn't reach for cobalt or sapphire or multichrome, but instead went for this earthy sky. indoor, CF lighting I fell utterly in love with the first one of Pahlish's crushed gold flake crellies that I tried, and then snapped up several more here and there as they've made appearances in a few of her collections.   outdoor, shady/overcast daylight Imperial Theater was from her collection themed around Russian ballet, and this soft, dusty, ever so slightly greyed-out cadet blue just nails that inspiration for me.  The base color feels both old-world and old-fashioned, and the lovely metallic gold flakes dial that up to understated opulence.  indoor, bright CF lighting The grey in here makes this as neutral as it's possible for a blue to be, with zero glimpse of lobster hands in any lighting situation, and I think quite wearable for most skin tones if you like this ...

 Time for a palate cleanser after all that dramatic nail art! indoor, bright CF lighting But of course even a "palate cleanser" can't be a plain boring neutral, and just as of course I have a pile of untried things needing my attention, and the intersection of those two is Vaporous Flowers, released as an "oops batch" by Femme Fatale back in 2017.  I don't believe anyone hypothesized what this was originally going to be, but the result is gorgeous.  outdoor, shady daylight Vaporous Flowers starts with a sandy nude base that somehow manages to be unusually shifty for a neutral shade.  It looks quite different in different lighting - sometimes a warmer pink (in low or angled lighting when the shimmer isn't at its boldest) and other times cool-toned not-quite-beige sandy.  indoor, bright CF lighting That contrasting shimmer + holographic microglitter is pure classic Femme Fatale, and as always if you like this finish nobody does it better,  As you can see...

 I live in the middle of the east coast, which means that I'm in the area that's inundated with the Brood X cicada emergence.  Cicadas are totally harmless, so I'm not at all freaked out by the insect horde, quite the contrary!  The genus for these guys is literally Magicicada, and they are truly magical.  After living a very long life underground, they head to the surface not because of some ideal condition of weather or food supply or anything else practical, but simply when their utterly amazing internal clock tells them all it's been 17 whole years.  They also have a lot of personal significance for me - I left my home state, family, and friends behind for the job opportunity of a lifetime, and the first summer after my arrival here, the cicadas made their arrival too.  In China, cicadas represent resurrection, a new start, and lofty goals .  I've been looking forward to their return all spring, and they're here and just as amazing as the first tim...

 Both of my book clubs have been meeting virtually during this whole global shut-down, and at our last zoom meting someone asked if I still did themed nails for them.  Since we met in-person (woohoo, and thank goodness for patios far grander than mine!), it was time to rekindle this here inspiration source. indoor, CF lighting Kate Atkinson's Life After Life features a pair of huge red English roses in full bloom, in reversed direction.  Though it's not very illustrative of the story inside, it is a very striking cover .  To recreate it, I've started with a grey crelly base in the shade I had closest to the cover background.  My accent nails are stamped using Clear Jelly Stamper CJS-05, the "renaissance rose" plate, which has an image of a rose built up in 3 layers.  When I've used this plate previously, I've only done 2 layers and found it to be finicky to use... but this time, all 3 stamped on with zero troubles, with dark red for the background, then de...