Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Continuing my switch back to dark polish every other mani is this long-untried super vampy blue, Color Club Williamsburg. indoor, bright CF lighting Williamsburg was released way back in 2013, and was the other hit from the Girl About Town collection (the first being The Uptown , long sold out and now hard to find).   outdoor, afternoon sunlight This is a super deep, dark, inky sapphire blue, filled with a microflake and glassfleck shimmer that makes little electric blue sparkles in this night sky base. indoor, bright CF lighting It goes on smoothly and is thoroughly opaque in two coats - you could likely get away with one very thick coat, but we all know that won't dry properly and might make your topcoat bubble, so stick with a lighter hand here.   window-filtered daylight We also know blues this saturated are going to stain the ever living everything out of your cuticles, so paint carefully!  Even a session with a clean-up brush wasn't adequate for me to get ...

 This week's light polish (that theme has worked for a whole 3 weeks haha!) is a super bright silver. indoor, bright CF lighting Tonic released I Had the Times Square of My Life way back in 2017 as a store exclusive for Color 4 Nails, and I'd originally passed on it because it was sold as a duo with a red polish that wasn't my jam.  I managed to snag a bottle when Tonic cleared out the vault and it is indeed super sparkly! outdoor, shaded daylight Times Square is a sheer, light silver base filled with both holo dust and holo glitter, and a bunch of metallic multichrome flakies.   outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight Turns out it also has a surprise flame of metallic contrast shimmer that shifts a bit from pale gold to warm copper, which catches and reflects any bright light shining on it. indoor, bright CF lighting Though I can see a bit of VNL in some of these photos, that wasn't the case IRL - Times Square was nicely visually opaque in just 2 smooth easy coats. ...

 Time to bounce back to a dark shade... but apparently I'm stuck on green right now. indoor, bright CF lighting Cirque Colors released Raven back in 2016 as part of a collection celebrating the Manus x Machina exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I have two of these polishes, and love them both! window-filtered shady daylight Raven is a somewhat sheer black jelly that is filled with a subtly duochromatic shimmer that gives a ghostly green shine in most all lighting.  I'm showing 2 coats here, which was enough for visual opacity. indoor, angled CF lighting At very steep angles, this shimmer flips over to a murky eggplant purple, but this wasn't immediately evident without acrobatic poses to specifically elicit the flip - in other words, not the sort of duochrome where different colors peek over the curve of the nail. window-filtered shady daylight In very bright light, this does indeed appear to be green more than black, as shown in most of my pics.  T...

 A couple of years ago, in order to reach into my stash more, I went for a few months alternating a bright/nontraditional polish color with a neutral one.  I think this year (at least for a while) I'm going to try something similar, alternating between a dark polish and a light one. indoor, CF lighting After my black NYE mani, first up in the lighter side is this glowy and soft confection from Bee's Knees Lacquer. outdoor, late afternoon daylight Mora was originally a prototype for Indie Expo Canada, then became a gift with purchase during a sale event.  When a free polish arrives at your house that's both green and aurora-shifty, you are winning at life! outdoor, shady daylight Mora is a very sheer jade green jelly that is packed with a very fine-milled aurora shimmer that appears as a glowy shine in low light, a bright sparkly ruddy gold in brighter light, and shifts to minty green at angles. outdoor, angled afternoon daylight Mora is quite sheer - I'm showing 3 coats...

Wanting something a little more low-key for this New Year's Eve, skipping out on a look stamped with celebration, I picked something that would have the fireworks embedded within. indoor, bright CF lighting Dragon Glass was Cuticula's offering in the August '21 "elements" PPU.  It's a black jelly packed with iridescent jewel-toned flakies, giving a very 'black opal' look. bright daylight To let those flakies shine brightly out of such a darkly colored base, this polish is sheer - much more so than I was expecting, in fact.  I have plenty of other flakie polishes with richly saturated bases, so it didn't occur to me that using it as a topper was the way to go, and I'm showing 3 and a half coats here. indoor, bright CF lighting In bright lighting indoors or out, the sheerness overlying my skin tone meant that this polish looked charcoal-grey or a warm-leaning off-black rather than true deep dark BLACK black. outdoor, shaded daylight In low light,...