Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 Every so often after a run of vampy or bright or flashy colors, I feel the need for a more neutral palate-cleanser type shade.  And while my workplace isn't one that expects a conservative dress code, there's still a little portion of my collection set aside for more traditionally feminine soft shades.  indoor, bright CF lighting Emily de Molly released Desert Rose (and yes, I have the Sting song on loop in my brain as I wore this and as I'm writing this) back when the FB group Hella Holo was a showcase for just one or two makers per month.   bright afternoon daylight This is a rich but soft pink that to me feels exactly like the heart of a pearlescent seashell.  The holo here is a very fine-particle sparkle of subtle rainbows around the edge of the nails. bright afternoon daylight While this is a linear holographic effect, the holo dust in here is always a supporting actor alongside the gorgeous contrast shimmer. indoor, bright CF lighting The shimmer in ...

Pulling Asylum out of my stash this past week reminded me that I'd originally bought it just a couple of months after Tonic polish released their amazing Dryad's Grove in a collab box.  I wanted the Tonic very much, but had no interest in the rest of the polishes, and unfortunately that was the case for a whole lot of people - prices quickly soared on the secondhand market.  Another month or so later, and Great Lakes Lacquer released O'Rlyeh?, another gorgeous green in the same vein.  I also managed to snap up a bottle of Enchanted's Holiday LE from 2014 from a destash.  And then last year, Tonic sent another few dozen bottles of Dryad's Grove out into the world as part of a mystery bag sale. indoor, CF lighting All swatches go in order of the bottle shots here: Index: Glitter Daze Asylum Middle:  Tonic Dryad's Grove Ring:  Great Lakes Lacquer O'Rlyeh? Pinky:  Enchanted Polish Holiday 2014 So right up front:  none of these are 100% ...

After last week's flurry of inspiration with that Creative Shop plate, I kinda ran out of steam.  Fortunately, a few nail polish fb groups do monthly or weekly challenges, including an April prompt for ladybug-themed designs. indoor, bright CF lighting I've started with 3 coats of Glitter Daze Asylum, which was released back in 2017 for Hella Handmade (or was it still Hella Holo back then??).  Asylum is a beautiful forest green linear holo that's also duochromatic.  outdoor, bright sunlight In bright light, of course, the sparkling rainbow arc takes center stage, with the slightly sheer jelly-type formula allowing all the light-bending elements to shine through easily. outdoor, bright sunlight The contrast shimmer in Asylum never completely takes it over - this is not duochrome where the shifting colors are the whole reason to be - but is more a supporting part.  It's always definitively green, but the center of the holo flame is filled in with...

This winter has been really odd, swinging from freezing to springlike every week or so.  With the merely cool but not frosty temperatures outside, plus a decent length on my nails right now, it's thermal weather for sure! indoor, CF lighting Winter Fire is part of Femme Fatale's recent Stephen King inspired series for HHC.  It's thoroughly unusual, and I have nothing even close in my stash. indoor, bright CF lighitng When this thermal is warm, it's a bright tomato/poppy orange-tinted red that would not be my usual go-to.  When cool, it's a deep slate/teal blue.  The swings this thermal takes are quite dramatic. indoor, bright CF lighting I've had only a few other thermals with such a vast gulf of difference between the warm and cool states, and typically I don't like them, because the in-between colors look muddy.  Somehow, though, the iridescent microglitters and flakies in this concoction keep everything tied together at all times, and it...

I was headed out of town for a meeting this week, and as per usual for this group I'm both kinda known for having fancy nails, yet don't want to go too flashy at a professional thing... indoor, CF lighting Kenyan Sunset was made for the Hella Holo Customs FB group back in August of 2015, when Dreamland Lacquer was still Smitten Polish.  It's an utterly luscious berry-leaning red with a very bold linear holographic effect, where the linear flame's blue line pops prominently in bright light. outdoor, bright sunlight Kenyan sunset was approximately opaque in just one coat, with a smooth formula and a good brush.  I am showing 2 coats + topcoat here, and the color deepened up just a tiny bit with that 2nd layer.  I stamped accent nails using half of a stylized flower design from Uber Chic 6-02 and Born Pretty silver stamping polish.  In some of the macro pics here I catch a little bit of edgewear and unevenness, but some of these pics are after 5+ days of wea...

In my efforts to get through my big pile of untried polishes, it's nice to sometimes stop with my swatching and actually play around with learning new techniques. indoor, bright CF lighting Tonic Polish was a recent maker of the month for Hella Holo Customs, and the luscious forest green Dragon Scale was my immediate must-have.  It's a smooth linear holo in the typical somewhat thick Tonic style, with some subtle iridescent flakes tossed into the mix.  It's nearly a one-coater, and if you layer on your first coat with a heavier hand than mine, one is all you'll need. outdoor, afternoon daylight for both For the 2 middle nails on both hands, I got the idea from a compilation video posted to one of my FB polish groups.  The video credited Sveta Sanders, but no hint of the mani I saw was to be found even after scrolling through the past year and a half of her IG posts.  The closest similar technique was one found in this video , where she layers drops of pol...

The sun came back out this week so it was most definitely holo time, and I really wanted a cream-and-fire palette. indoor, bright CF lighting Bite Me was a Halloween True Blood special for the Hella Holo Customs group.  True to the inspiration pic of the mostly naked vampire, it's about as pale a color as you can go while still calling it "nude."  Barely golden-sand tinted, this is a gorgeous neutral with a beautiful linear holo sparkle. indoor, bright CF lighting Interestingly enough, this polish was recently proposed in a FM group as a white holo (since truly white holos are borderline impossible to make because the holographic dust tints the base grey instead of white).  While it's a super pale nude, white? naaawww.  Then I stamped over it, and yeah, pretty close actually! bright sunlight I recently got Esmaltes da Kelly's KN-24 stamping plate that has a few layering designs, including the pair of images I used here - the outlines of the scale...

Oh humongous polish stash, what else hides untried in this pile that I've forgotten about for over a year??? indoor, bright CF lighting There is Your Treasure was a November 2015 Hella Holo Customs polish. this one named for a Paulo Coelho quote (as all Literary Lacquers are named after bits of books).  It's a gorgeous blue somewhere between periwinkle and violet, with a soft magenta-pink flash and a scattered holo shimmer. outdoor, afternoon sunlight sparking that pink indoor, bright CF lighting  The formula was dead perfect, requiring almost no clean-up, going on thin and smooth and self-leveling.  It's a little sheer like all LL polishes tend to be, so 3 coats were needed for this color intensity and opacity, but each coat dries quickly so it's NBD. outdoor, as bright sunlight as February is gonna give me It's got a pretty holo sparkle, not quite linear, in bright light, but it's one of those that's still perfectly lovely even in unf...

And finally, for actual Halloween, I got around to using one of last year's HHC True Blood LEs, Anonymous Lacquer's Vampire Barbie. indoor, bright CF lighting A true red holo has been one of the harder colors to find - "red" holos tend to lean more orangey or flame-colored.  Vampire Barbie manages to be exactly the color it should be:  actual red, with the tiniest touch of brown to bring it over to BLOOD red and not candy-apple.  It's a gorgeous color that went on quite sheer at first, needing 3 coats to be completely opaque. outdoor, bright sunlight I stamped some Dia del Muertos skulls using El Corazon white and BundleMonster's BM-413 for my last Halloween design this year. Rating:  a solid 3 out of 5 stars, Vampire Barbie had a fabulous color, but was a little too thin for my taste and showed edgewear pretty quickly.  Maybe I just wasn't feeling red, IDK, but this one is definitely worth coming back to. Where to buy:  join the HHC fb gr...

There's a whole lot of grey/pewter/black/charcoal untrieds lying around here, so I stuck with my 2nd black-with-a-twist for this week. indoor, bright CF lighting Pick Your Poison was an April offering of Hella Holo Customs from new-to-me Aussie brand Sayuri.   It's a mass of small aqua-to-purple duochromatic flakies in a dark charcoal base, along with a smattering of very fine silvery shimmer. outdoor, overcast daylight  The overall effect is subtly shifty in low light, then a charcoal with dark blue or aqua sparkle in bright light (oddly very similar to Morticia from earlier this week though the two really have nothing in common finish-wise). indoor, CF lighting Now, for all that this is a Hella holo, I gotta be real and say there's approximately no holo to be found here.  Yeah, in the macro you can see a couple of rainbow sparks, so there's some quantity of very fine holo dust in the mix, but it genuinely doesn't translate to the nail at all. ...