Sweet Baby Octopolish!

One of the Enchanteds I was able to pick up in my recent destash purchase was the re-release of an old fave, Austin Powers.  I was never able to get a hold of the original or the re-release, so had been pretty happy with the other gold holos in my collection, but when it was available for a reasonable price, well... indoor, bright CF lighting Austin Powers is a lovely champagne gold linear holo that's made even more blingy by being packed with translucent copper micro flakies. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight The flakes take center stage in low lighting, and then that holo BAM when the sun comes out... outdoor, direct daylight The polish is quite sheer, and needed 3 coats for full opacity.  Every coat went on smooth and even and self-leveled flawlessly, and dried nice & quick.  Some 3-coaters can be real PITA, but this was all good. indoor, bright CF lighting The other thing 3-coaters are prone to is chipping quickly, since the total mani ends up rather thick.  N...

Still plenty of time to fit in more Halloween manis all week! outdoor, overcast daylight I wanted to go in a completely different direction from my former Halloween look, so went with a monochromatic grey color scheme.  The base here is Native War Paints Jessica, which like most NWP I have shows some pretty serious UBS and pigment settling, but shook right up with no trouble and was a smooth almost one-coater.  This stone grey has a warm coppery red contrasting shimmer, so I took my color scheme for the rest of the mani from that.  Splatter images are from Dixie Plates Halloween 2017 stamped with El Corazon Kaleidoscope white and true red, and my trusty NanaCoco Love Black.  The cheeky ghost from MoYou London Geek 13 (who obviously has made all this mess) is reverse-stamped in the same colors. indoor, CF lighting As with all my MYL plates, I had zero issues lifting this image on the first try.  The cartoony, thickly lined images on this plate are ide...

I've been in a hell of a funk lately, and when I asked the man re: color suggestions, he casually tossed out that I never do a classic french mani look.  Well, there's a reason for that:  my polish buddies have referred to the classical white-tipped  french mani/pedis as "stripper nails" in a years-long running in-joke.  On top of that, I'm convinced it looks pretty dated in a vague late-90s sort of way.  But as a concept, the two tone look is something I can certainly work with. outdoor, shady & overcast daylight I started with 2 very thin coats of Esmaltes da Kelly black soap bubbles - a sheer black jelly polish ideal for leadlighting-type nail art.  It ended up a little bit more streaky/uneven than ideal, but any more layers would have darkened it up enough to ruin the dramatic contrast. outdoor, overcast daylight I've stamped using MoYou London Frenchy 17 (a whole collection dedicated to thwarting the stripper nail stigma!), first with ...

I really love my bookclub - we pick a fairly broad range of eclectic selections, and it's a super fun group of people.  I don't do themed nails for every meeting (inspiration has to strike, after all!), but for this month it was just too easy to be right on point to pass up the chance. This month, the pick was one I'd read way back in college, not terribly long after it came out.  I took my inspiration straight from the cover, with green leaves on an orange background, plus the titular gorilla. Girly Bits I'm Your Venus provided a lovely metallic copper in 2 easy coats.  Using images from MoYou London Enchanted 07 plate, I stamped the leaf patterns (both by themselves, and the design with the leaves framing the gorilla) in Emily de Molly green, then overstamped the gorilla alone in black. Pickup was pretty perfect for the leaves alone, but less so for the gorilla image, unusual since MYL's plates tend to be some of the easiest to work with in my colle...

My book club has been around for 15 years now (though I only joined in the last year or two), so one of the original members hosted our "literary quinceañera" this weekend, with margaritas & a taco bar.  I happen to have a vibrantly patterned shirt, with bright threads zig-zagging over cream all around the neckline, and figured I should do my nails to match. indoor, bright CF lighting I started with Don Deeva Captain Yayo, a sheer white crelly that is utterly loaded in iridescent gold microflake shimmer.  It's sheer and needed 2 and a half coats to get to the level of opacity you see here, but each coat went on evenly and dried very quickly, so no application problems at all. indoor, bright CF lighting I selected stamping polish colors based on the bright jewel tones from my shirt: Esmaltes da Kelly Wendy & Joanna, Emily de Molly green, all tied together with Born Pretty gold stamping polish. super matchy-matchy! For all the stacked arc desi...