Sweet Baby Octopolish!

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...

As is often the case when I need a starting point to select a polish, I check in with my partner, who helpfully suggests a base color.  As he's done more often lately, though, he got awfully specific this time:  "blue with green flakies." indoor, bright CF lighting Illyrian Alfheim is a lovely cool cerulean blue - somewhere between sky and cobalt, but closer to the latter.  It's a quite sheer jelly to allow the iridescent "ocean" type flakies - the sort from the old Nfu-oh polishes that shift from green to aqua to blue - to shine through. window-filtered overcast daylight I'm wearing 3 coats here.  The base color was a touch uneven until 3rd coat, but the sea of flakies distributed very evenly on each coat and actually looked best at the 2nd.  The 3rd coat meant the flakies started to layer over top of each other, and look more like a full wall of shimmer rather than individual separate pigment elements. window-filtered afternoon sunlight...

I've been really inspired lately to do themed nails for my book club, and my recent pick of Patricia McKillip's World Fantasy Award winner The Forgotten Beasts of Eld practically demanded a mani based on the beautiful fantasy imagery. This amazingly beautiful book tells the story of a dark-eyed, ivory-haired sorceress and the menagerie of magical animals that share her home.  Selecting a theme for this design was easy, and fortunately my love of fantastic themed plates is just as strong as my love of fantasy books, so there were plenty of plates to pull from. Throughout this mani, I've used the dragon scales from MM21 - as with my handful of other Messy Mansion plates, this is amazingly well-etched and gives zero grief with lifting images.  Also on my left hand, I have the black cat's eye from Marianne Professional No 20 and the sorceress' swirling hair and solemn gaze from Creative Shop 28, and these two are also fantastic plates. My right hand ha...

Sweet Baby Octopus, the weather has been utterly bizarre on the east coast this year!  Spikes up into the gloriously sunny 70s, then another frozen snap.  The poor buds trying to bloom don't know what to do.  Fortunately, having things bloom on my nails to greet the technical start of spring is much more straightforward. indoor, bright CF lighting Femme Fatale released Cote d' Opale (The Opal Coast) as part of her 2016 blogger collaboration with Very Emily (whose swatches I miss a whole lot).  It's a soft, pale blue somewhere between winter sky and barely turquoise, liberally dusted with a bright coppery red shimmer that shifts to bronze at angles, plus scattered iridescent flakes.  My pics show this a little lighter than official swatches, so there's a possibility it's faded a little, but what's on my nails exactly matches the swatch stick I made when I bought it. indoor, bright CF lighting Cote d' Opale had a very nice Goldilocks formula - neit...

The day after Christmas, my partner and I hopped on a plane to go spend time with family in Colorado through New Year's Eve.  When I go out of town, I never take super special LE polishes, the sort that would be impossible to replace if they got lost out of my luggage.  For the most sparkle-tastic holiday of the year, I wanted to look classy but blingy.  A good stamping plate and some sadly ignored mainstream polishes worked out perfectly! window-filtered overcast daylight First up, for the trip out, I wore Sinful Colors Haute Koffee.  Haute is a luscious, deep, dark, vampy wine with a beautiful shimmer that's utterly hidden by the velvety matte finish.  This is absolutely one of those polishes that you can wear 2 different ways, and would look contrasty enough to be pretty with part of each nail painted in glossy topcoat and part left matte.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, then stamped with a paisley-esque stripe design from Creative Shop 77 using Emily d...