Sweet Baby Octopolish!

A friend was over this week and picked out a blinding holo for me to do her nails with... which got me nostalgic for back in the day when linear holos were the height of indie nail polish fashion... which made me realize this gorgeous thing had been sitting in the vault unloved for way too long! indoor, bright CF lighting Awwww yeaaaaah, check out that sweet sweet holo flame: outdoor, bright daylight Darling Diva released Nightbird as part of her 2014 Stevie Nicks-themed White Witch collection, most all of which were bright linear holographic polishes.  This one is a deeply saturated sapphire blue, with a readily visible rainbow flame in bright light. indoor, office fluorescent lighting When indoor or in lower light, Nightbird was a barely violet-leaning navy with a subtle grey cast from the holo dust.  outdoor, bright daylight This took two coats to get to perfect opacity, and I had zero problems with the formula.  Fortunately, though this has a hint of violet to the blu...

 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...

Every so often, my attempts to not order the same things that I already have backfire, and I eventually have to give into the allure of something even though I'm convinced its sister already resides here.  Sometimes, my buying spree works out gloriously. indoor, bright CF lighting Darling Diva released Have You Ever Been Mistaken For a Man? as part of her 2015 Aliens collection, and IMHO was the real standout in a smorgasbord of interesting colors.  I missed it the first time around, but the moment I saw it in a destash it came right home where it belonged, and was promptly nothing at all like other purple holos in my collection. window-filtered direct sunlight Have You Ever Been Mistaken For a Man? is a plummy red-leaning purple, warmer than most other purples around here.  There's a nice linear holo here, but as this is not a sheer jelly type formula, the holo isn't a blinding in-your-face flame. indoor, bright CF lighting This was easily opaque in one...

Mystic Glacier, out of a stash of over a thousand polishes at this point, is still a knockout.  It's so special that  I wore it for my last big birthday .  I've done comparisons with what I had closest 2 years ago, and there just wasn't anything truly like it .  I've seen it go for crazy money at auction.  And with the market flush with "unicorn pee" polishes in the past year, surely somebody has come up with a near-dupe?  Well, let's find out. That's a whole lotta sky blue, and there were of course plenty of other things here that weren't close enough to be included.  To make this a bit more wieldy, I've broken this series into 3 more parts.  My original 2017 Part 1 is linked above, this is Part 2, Part 3 is here , and Part 4 is here . For this round of comparisons, I'm showing Mystic Glacier against other jelly-based polishes that have the "real" red-to-green shifting shimmer in Clarins 230 - these are the ones closest to...

I was so NOT ready to take off the gorgeous black Together Dead and Lonely, but after a couple of days I did wish that it had more holo OOMPH, so I topped it with Darling Diva's Dangerous Driver and ended up wearing black nail polish for almost a week straight.  For verisimilitude, all pics taken in a car, while trying very much to not be dangerous (pics only while stopped at lights, yo). bright sunlight for all pics   The last time I wore Dangerous Driver , I said it was a holo sparkle and not linear.  Weeeeel, I kinda lied - this stuff is a flaming holo goodness that's as close as something can get to linear before it actually IS linear. check out those rainbows It's also filled with the Clarins 230/Fantasy Fire pigment that polish junkies swoon over, making this black shine everywhere from brick red to bronze to green. bronze flash green flash Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  One easy, smooth coat is all that's needed for this huge spar...

For my friend's themed Oscars party last night, I skipped out on dressing up, but decided to have "Red Carpet" nails instead. indirect sunlight I started with a base of Jessica's Street Swagger, a rich Chanel Vamp-type dried-blood red crème that I got in a Ninja Polish mystery bag.  This is one coat with no cleanup - a fantastic formula and lovely dark color. indoor CF lighting On top of this, I added one thick coat of Darling Diva's Ringer (a Clarins 230/Fantasy Fire type red-to-green color shifting shimmer), then one light coat of Picture Polish's Festival (a multicolored flakie). indirect sunlight In lower light, the rainbow of flakes took center stage, but at angles and brighter light, Ringer was queen. red and bronze! emerald green! all the colors! I was fascinated by the apparent color shift of the flakies in Festival, the way they blended into Ringer's emerald shift especially. Rating:  3 stars for the sorta spar...

After my last steely grey mani started wearing out quickly, I topped it with another deep gray flasher, Darling Diva's Bitchcraft. indoor CF lighting Bitchcraft (surely in the running for the best name ever) is a deep charcoal grey linear holo that also has a sprinkling of color-shifting micro glitters: outdoor, indirect overcast light In the above pic, you can see the little bits shifting from violet to cobalt to coppery orange - a similar color change to, say, ILNP Cygnus Loop and the glitters in some of the Ozotics or Hits Afterglow.  I do love holos with a little somethin' somethin' to spice them up in lower light! outdoor, late afternoon sunlight The holo is as strong as Darling Diva typically makes, and is much clearer than in the pics I'm showing. Check out the coppery glint to the shift in the bottle above, and the left nail below. Rating:  a solid 3 out of 5 stars.  It coated my previous stuff in 2 easy coats and has a nice formula,...

Last year's Queen collection (with all the polishes named for songs by the band) from Darling Diva was pretty fantastic, and I ended up snapping up most of them.  I've so far loved every one that I've tried, but it just so happens this is the first I've blogged of them. indoor, indirect sunlight All of the Queen polishes are duochromes that are also linear holos, so in the shade (above) you have a color shift, while in the sun/flash (below) you have a rainbow. indoor, flash Crazy Little Thing Called Love is a steely blue that shifts to silver and purple, and almost to copper.  It's generally pastel, but I'm sure that a darker version of these colors would happen when layered over black if that's your thing.  Shown here are 2 fully opaque coats on its own, undies are most definitely not needed. indoor, flash Most typically, I saw this saturated faded-denim shade of blue, with the really pretty flash of the same in the middle of the holo arc....