Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Just a quick look for this week - I was off at a business meeting most of the week, so toned it down to seasonally cute but not too outré. This is a base of 2 coats of ILNP Sitting Fireside, then stamped with layered jack o'lantern images from Clear Jelly Stamper Haunted Mansion (which I've gotten a lot of use from this season!).  The tiny pinky nail pumpkin is from the same plate, one of a set that's supposed to be an accent in a brocade pattern ;) ~Michelle

I wanted my last Halloween look to match up to a super cute shirt I just picked up, which has a spiderweb design on the collar and sleeves.  As soon as I saw this fantastic design by Tiana Locket , I instantly knew I had to do something similar for one of my Halloween looks, so here goes! outdoor, afternoon daylight for all pics The beautifully shifty base here is three coats of ILNP Peace, a gorgeously vampy multichrome that I rather liked the first time I wore it .  One to two coats over black would have given the same oomph, but I usually prefer these shifters to shine on their own.  Case in point about the black base:  my accent nails started with a single sheer coat of Glitter Gal Light as a Feather, then a steeply curved french tip from Maniology M053 first in black, then with 2 stamped coats of Peace.  It's only in specific lighting angles that I could tell the difference over black vs solo, but by itself, Peace was a lot easier to clean up....

As per usual when I need ideas on a starting point for my nails, I asked the man his opinion.  While he most typically gives me just a color, for some strange reason, he was unusually specific:  white and opalescent with lots of flakies.  *Shrug.*  Ok, here goes. indoor, bright CF lighting The result reminds me of shimmery, spangled disco jumpsuits & flashing lights, so I'm calling this a disco nail art look.  It's fun, but not something I would have come up with on my own, so I just popped my hip and flung the opposite pointer in the air and went with it. window-filtered sunlight I started out with a base of Hard Candy Coconut in hopes that its shimmer might peek through the flake base (lol, nope, it's still just plain white on the nail).  Since clearly more shimmer was needed, I then topped with Baroness X Fox Fires, an iridescent microflakie topcoat, which absolutely amped up the shimmer quotient.  Next, I used some french tip guide...

The other polish that I immediately thought of when deciding what to revisit was one that I always find myself shocked that I somehow never photographed.  I just know I've worn it at least twice before this, but maybe I'm just imagining things... indoor, CF lighting Once upon a time, Ozotic made duo-and  multichrome polishes that had really pretty shift (according to pics, I don't actually have these myself) but were so sheer that wearing over black was a definite necessity.  Then ILNP burst onto the scene, first with some pretty holos, then with some staggeringly beautiful shifting magic that was opaque on its own, no undies required.  ILNP Birefringence is the absolute mother of all multichromes.  I had a hard time narrowing down all the pics I got, so buckle up, and spoiler alert - all the colors even hinted at in that bottle shot above are absolutely visible on the nail. outdoor, shady and overcast daylight When viewed dead-on, Birefringence is a...

This week is cold and snowy AF, so while winter designs are thematically appropriate this time of the year, I'm kinda suffering and can't reasonably reach for snowflake stamping plates and stuff like that.  When searching through my spreadsheet for other worn but not photographed/blogged polishes for this here reload series, though, I did find the most impossibly appropriately named pair ever. indoor, CF lighting ILNP released Absolute Zero as a gift with purchase if you bought a certain number of their 2013 Fall collection polishes, and Winter was from a 2016 winter trio, and those are the frostiest polish names I have bar none. window-filtered bright afternoon sunlight Winter is a slightly greyed white - the closest I have in my stash to a "true" white linear holographic, this phenomenon being notoriously difficult for makers to achieve since holo pigment is itself grey.  Ultimately, I feel that stark whites have an unfortunate resemblance to whiteout, w...

After a way too rainy autumn, the sun finally started peeking out, so round 2 of "all winter holiday all December" needed a cheerfully blinding holo. indoor, CF lighting Treehouse is a flamingly linear holo in a shade somewhere between mossy green and old-gold bronze - I have it filed as green, because it most definitely looks green in the bottle, but in fact most of the time on the nail it wore more as bronze.  Either way, it's a flashy antique earth tone with an utterly perfect formula that threw rainbows at every opportunity.  I haven't bought a "plain" holo in quite some time - apparently, I prefer my holos to be multichromes or have flakies or something else... but this color is utterly unique in my stash and well worth grabbing. outdoor, overcast daylight Over this earthy bronze, I've stamped a wintertime forest with a touch of snow using BM-407.  There's one large dot of snow plus a few smaller ones at the top of the image, and I r...

One good ILNP of course deserves another, so more shifty shimmers for all Halloween all month! indoor, bright CF lighting ILNP Clever Girl is a cool, soft grey that's warmed up to a concrete tone due to the masses of bronze-gold chunky shimmer filling the crelly-style base.  I can see some VNL in macro shots here, but that wasn't the case IRL, the shimmer was enough to have this looking opaque at 2 coats. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight In low lighting, the scattered holo flake gave Clever Girl a subtly speckled appearance, and the gold shimmer almost completely vanished.  Formula was great on this, and ILNP's brush never gives me any grief - super smooth, dried evenly, wore nicely. indoor, bright CF lighting In any kind of regular to bright light, though, the shimmer wasn't at all shy, and was a nearly metallic zing on top of the creamy grey base.  In brighter light, the silver holo flake vanished, leaving only a rainbow sparkle, but no speckling....

Since I was off to a conference this week, I kept my Halloween mani just a little more subtle, and based on a color that's just drop-dead gorgeous on its own. indoor, bright CF lighing ILNP released Ava as part of this year's Fall collection, and as soon as I opened the box it leapt to the top of the "must try ASAP" list.  It's a gorgeous purple jelly with a rather chameleon personality - the base itself is more violet, while the heavy copper shimmer warms things up to an overall plum shade.  It's also scattered with some holo flake, and ooooh look at that flash of contrasting rainbow around the bottom edge of the bottle! indoor, bright CF lighting Oh yes, that sweetness is showing just the suggestion of an rich emerald green flash.  Most all of my pics trying to catch the emeralds ended up unusably blurry, but it's there, peeking through the vines that surround this jack-o-lantern: outdoor, bright afternoon light I've stamped her...

There's nothing new under the sun, right?  And certainly the bigger my polish stash gets (ok, seriously, intervention is required), I really do have plenty of minutely similar things.  Since 230/Fantasy Fire shimmer is both a super fave of mine and super popular right now, surely someone somewhere  has snuck into my hoard a near dupe to the stunner that is Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier, right? Spoiler alert:  nope, not even close. In all pics for this post, I've left 3 coats of Mystic Glacier on my middle finger, and put the watermark there for easy visual reference.  My index finger is Dreamland Lacquer You Saucy Minx (3 coats), ring is Dreamland A Wedding Dress That Isn't Bright Turquoise (3 coats), and pinky is one coat of Glitter Gal Tart Yourself Up + 2 coats of ILNP The Magician.  I've used my standard slightly milky-translucent basecoat (NailTek 2 Ridge Filling) and then ProFX topcoat for all swatches to try and minimize the apples-to-orang...

While the ever-changing nature of duochromes captures my heart every time, there's one sad truth to keep in mind:  there's apparently only so many unique duochromatic pigments out in the world.  I've gotten snared by my same fave colors over and over  so that I try to talk myself out of anything new that makes my heart flutter.  Peace is gorgeous enough that I've said no to some similar-looking polishes, and very conveniently I was road-tripping off to visit Suzy who just happened to have a bottle of a recent HHC I'd managed to pass on, so a comparison was in order. L-toR for both: C&C Cheshire Rose, ILNP Peace, Enchanted Entwined The bottle shots give the story away pretty clearly:  none of these are dupes for each other, but they're all most definitely "cousins" if not "sisters" in the same color family. indoor, CF lighting, L-to-R Entwined, Peace, Cheshire Rose For all nail swatches, my middle and pinky are ILNP Peace,...

I think I love duochromes absolutely best of all the possible polish choices... yeah, even more than flakies and holo.  And arguably the queen of duochrome polishes is the mind behind ILNP. indoor, CF lighting From the 2014 summer collection, Peace is one of ILNP's "older" duochromes, and I picked up the regular version before the holo version was available.  It's a deep, rich purple that shifts into plenty of other mostly cool shades. indoor, CF lighting The bottle shot above and the arced fingers below show the full range of Peace's transition - no crazy underwater acrobatics necessary.  At low angles, it'll get all the way down to an inky sapphire blue, while at acute angles it'll go past magenta and on to gold and finally just a little bit of green.  IMHO all of these pics are color-accurate, this line of polishes all really do hit all of these colors. window-filtered daylight As is really consistent for all of ILNP's multichromes...