Sweet Baby Octopolish!

While I'm not at all a monarchist, I am a bit of an anglophile, and in honor of the queen's passing I pulled out Girly Bits' lovely November 2018 PPU offering, My Name is Elizabeth. indoor, bright CF lighting Elizabeth is a lush royal berry wine shade, filled with holographic microglitters, holo flake, and iridescent flakies. window-filtered bright daylight This went on in two smooth coats, and the formula and brush were exactly as nice as you'd expect from Girly Bits. outdoor, shady late afternoon daylight The flakies & tiny glitters were very well behaved, and though this dries a little satin, one regular layer of topcoat was all that's needed to bring it up to a smooth shine. indoor, bright CF lighting This wore a little more quickly than ideal, showing some edgewear by day 3, but I enjoyed the color enough to wear it most of the week anyway. outdoor, late afternoon daylight indoor, CF lighting Rating:  4 out of 5 stars, this is a classy and classically femin...

New month, new nail art prompts from one of my FB groups, and what was going to be a quick cute something for a couple of days ended up being my look for most of a week.  The prompt was "baby" and while I just don't particularly care for people babies, I have been spending a whole lot of quality time with my sweet baby dog, who happens to be fawn & white, so voila! indoor, bright CF lighting I've started here with 4 very thin, super smooth coats of Girly Bits Eggnogoholic - I said the first time that I wore it that I wasn't sure it would come to opacity even by 4, and whaddyaknow, it does indeed!  Over this off-white creamy speckly base, I've added paw prints & an "I heart/paw my dog" image from Marianne Pro No 20, and the A++ sighthound image from MoYou London Animal 01 in Super Chic Rum Billie. Hope you're finding zen with your pupper kiddos as well, ~Michelle

It's rapidly getting colder around here, with less leaves on the trees, and a quick slide toward winter barreling down on us.  Definitely time for something vampy-dark! indoor, bright CF lighting Girly Bits Darkly Dreaming is a deep forest green jelly sprinkled with fiery copper shimmer.  It's a very wearable, earthy green that never tipped into looking black in lower lighting.  The first coat went on a bit streaky and uneven like saturated jelly polishes often do, and the 2nd coat didn't quite even that out for me.  Though I liked the slightly lighter color at 2 coats better, a 3rd coat was needed for opacity and evenness, which also brought it to the same color depth as what you see in the bottle. outdoor, afternoon sunlight In lower lighting, the deep base color swallowed up most of the shimmer, with just a little glimmer flashing out here and there, while more of the glowing embers look flashed out with light shining directly on it. indoor, CF...

While 230/Fantasy Fire ("unicorn pee") shifting shimmer gets the lion's share of the attention, I've tried out a few polishes lately that had a gold-green shifty shimmer that appears to be the same brightness and particle size (e.g.,  Baroness X Quixotica) .  A bottle of this other flavor of magic showed up at my house recently, and it inspired me to do a sort of tonal negative-space mani. indoor, CF lighting Girly Bits Street Magic is this lovely gold-to-green sparkling shimmer in a barely milky base (it might be in a clear base, and that's just the haze of the shimmer itself, not 100% sure).  It's a perfectly nice thickness for an effects topcoat, and I'm showing 2 layers here. window-filtered bright sunlight Street Magic is of course supposed to be used as a topcoat, and I'm sure it'd work fabulously for that as well.  The overall effect solo is that of barely-there translucent milky jade with loads of glowy embers. late afternoo...

This past week had me off to another  work trip, this time for CE and hanging out with my colleagues from the other side of the country, so I went with professionally subtle, but with a definite nailista flair. indoor for all pics I was inspired by the lovely Emily de Molly - she had a gorgeous mani that involved flakies under a white stamp, and my new HeHe plates were just begging to be used. This is one coat of Girly Bits Enabler, a gorgeously bright and seriously shifty iridescent flakie - it's more shocking pink than Essie Shine of the Times and her dupes, and I think might actually hit a few more colors overall, too.  I've then topped it with the freeflow watermarble pattern from HeHe 037, from their "Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio" collection. Like most round plates, this one is pretty petite and I honestly would have liked it more if the marble design occupied an even half (or more) of the plate, instead of having the adorable goldfish an...

Apparently, my pendulum is going to swing with each mani from a light color to a vampy one.  Maybe that's my new deal this year:  office appropriate then crazy each week?  Who knows?! indoor, bright CF lighting Girly Bits Eggnogoholic was from a holiday collection (of course, given the name) from a couple of years ago.  It's a barely off-white color that my grandmother would have called "almond," and it's in a translucent crelly finish that gets a lovely shine with one layer of topcoat. outdoor, filtered daylight VNL was certainly happening in all lighting conditions, but in that delicately feminine way that I think is pretty and not a flaw.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, but I'm not really sure you'd get to opacity even with 4. indoor, CF lighting The small, opaque gold glitters in Eggnogoholic are a subtly festive touch to an otherwise subtle neutral.  They're not holo or flashy, just a gentle break in the color.  I wore this to a m...

Sometimes you really need a nail-palate cleanser after tons of dark and rich colors, and it's still time to holo while the sun's out, so I pulled Girly Bits Push It off the untried pile. indoor, bright CF lighting Push It is a silver with a whole lot going on.  It's got a sparkly scattered holo finish, plus a bunch of silvery shimmer, plus a bunch of holo hex glitter in mostly copper but with a few silver ones thrown in. direct sunlight The holo is more of a sparkle than a flame, but the scattered holo particles plus the chunkier rainbows off the glitter meant this was pretty sparkle-tastic. In the shade, the glitters were more apparent than in bright sunlight, which was both more visual interest/complexity than your usual holo, and also a little bit muddy.  The formula was thick enough that glitters didn't lay totally flat on the nail, and i did need to clip a couple of them off to prevent any OCD craziness. shady, overcast daylight Push It wore ...

My brother got married yesterday (congrats, bro!), so I needed something festive enough to match my dress and the lovely springtime weather, but not too blingtastic.  Shiny copper to the rescue! indoor CF lighing I'm Your Venus is part of last year's 80s Girl Bands collection from Girly Bits, most of which were holos with matching shimmer (she calls them "shimmolos").  Venus is a light, bright copper just the color of a brand new penny. outdoor, direct sunlight The holo here is a sparkly linear - while there's definitely a flame arc, this is a lot softer than plenty of my other linear ones.  The central bright flash of copper comes up in bright sunlight, but is quite subdued indoors, making this sort of like a stealthy almost-neutral. indirect, overcast light The shimmer in this meant that somehow the holo was never greyed out, and didn't get that muted, silvery-dusty look that some really strong linears show in low light. outdoor, late a...

Girly Bits just released a gorgeous  collaboration shade with The Polishaholic , so I figured it was time to dig up my so far only GB polish from the untried stash, Cu Blue. Cu Blue is a very deep cobalt blue, liberally sprinkled with copper shimmer particles: From the bottle shots above, you can see 2 things: it's definitely a sheer jelly, and in the bottle it looks nearly black.  To be honest, when it first arrived, I was sorely disappointed - this most definitely looked like one that would be a surprise black in most lighting, which is why it languished in the untrieds despite the swatch stick assuring me that it was blue in 2 coats.  I was happy to find out wearing it that in all lighting, Cu Blue is most definitely BLUE, and isn't anywhere near black.  In fact, I wouldn't even call it navy blue - there's no dusky or grey tinges to it, definitely a deeply saturated cobalt true blue.  The copper shimmer, while certainly present, is more hidden th...