Sweet Baby Octopolish!

The polish world was shook when ILNP released Eclipse - a jaw-dropping red-to-black duochrome - last Halloween, and shortly that pigment was out in the world and being used in plenty of goodies.  Though I of course snapped up several variants, they've all languished in the neverending Mount Untried... indoor, CF lighting Laszlo is part of a series Shleee Polish released named after characters & moments in the show What We Do In the Shadows (which is hilarious and awesome).   outdoor, bright sunlight This particular version of the duochrome has a linear holo added to the mix, which is gorgeously sparkly in any bright lighting, but doesn't grey out the polish much so that it stays a nice rich black. outdoor, bright sunlight This particular pigment is a true duochrome, not a rainbow of shifts between two poles.  Laszlo flips straight from black to red with barely a hint gold in between. indoor, bright CF lighting The lack of overtones and in-between shades is actual...

 When ya got time to paint and are ready to deal with the precision needed to make magnetics work... indoor, bright CF lighting I'm just gonna say:  HOT DAMN. outdoor, bright sunlight Bee's Knees released the magic that is Losing My Mind (srsly, mind is lost, just wwooowwww) as part of the album covers theme with March 2019 PPU.  This will obviously be a pic-heavy post, both because this polish has a lot going on, and because it's just too pretty for me to cut back the photos.  indoor, bright CF lighting To start with, this polish is quite sheer to let all these gorgeously shimmery elements shine forth, so I've layered 2 coats of it over a single coat of a piano black crème.  In the bottle, LMM is a dusty plummy purple full of iridescent flakies, with flashes of red and gold.  But when you magnetize it... indoor, CF lighting And THERE'S where the magic is revealed.  Losing My Mind is a black base filled to the brim with everyone's favorite Clarins 230 ...

 The man picked "purple" when I was stumped for a color, but I was feeling very pastel instead of vampy and this little gem fit my mood just right. indoor, bright CF lighting Ethereal has a certain aesthetic she sticks to most of the time, and this polish falls right within that type - it is indeed ethereal, cool-toned and sheer, with enough sparkles for a faery queen. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight This particular example starts with a softly sheer lavender base - I file polishes by color, and this one is with other lavender purples - that is absolutely filled to the brim with a duochromatic shimmer that's a metallic light aqua in direct light, then shifts to a lavender almost the same color as the base at angles. outdoor, bright angled sunlight Added to the sparkle factor, this proto has a very finely milled linear holo that's beautiful in bright light and fully hidden by the contrast shimmer in lower light. indoor, bright CF lighting You can see a bit of VNL in s...

 In today's episode of "stuff that's been laying around untried for a really long time" we have the "unicorn pee" polish Monocerus from Darling Diva. indoor, bright CF lighting Monocerus was a mystery batch from 2016 that was sold in limited quantities (a single batch as far as I can tell) along with a collection of other polishes containing the infamous Clarins 230 shifty pigment that we all know and love.   outdoor, bright direct sunlight I have this polish filed as a "berry wine" shade, which this most certainly is... though I'll swear the few other swatches I've seen of it at the time of its release were a darker purple.  I'm convinced it's faded a bit, but my fingernails match my original swatch stick, so I may be way off on that. outdoor, shady daylight In any case, the color we have here is a bright magenta-berry that's very feminine and plenty sparkly, and is actually "traditional" enough to be office-appropria...

Brightly saturated colors are right up my alley right now, and green is of course a huge fave, so for whatever reason (ok, those I just mentioned), a recent PPU exclusive jumped to the top of the line. indoor, CF lighting How many green flakie polishes do I have (at least 20), and yet how do I resist them (I don't)?  And this beauty is a great example of why I can't say no. outdoor, overcast daylight Watcha is a new-to-me brand based out of Brazil (whoops, I thought these guys were British!!) that's been making PPU offerings for only a little while now, and I'm not actually sure if they have a US stockist for the rest of their stuff.  The Green was released with this past December's PPU as part of a collab with several other makers picking a color-character from the game Among Us. indoor, bright CF lighting The Green is a deep emerald jelly that leans slightly teal, liberally dosed with ultrachrome flakies that most often looked gold or peridot-green to me. outdoor,...