Sweet Baby Octopolish!

A friend called up this week with unexpected good news - they'd bought tickets to see Return of the Jedi with a live orchestra literally years ago, and it was rescheduled for this weekend, and the folks originally going with them now couldn't make it.  But we sure could! all photos indoor, CF lighting I decided to go with a light side & dark side look in black & white.  On my left hand I had the battle for the Death Star... And on my right, our best friends from the series. Images came from Mundo de Unas plates Seducao 11 and Star Wars 2.   May the force be with you! ~Michelle 

Closing out my Star Trek series, I have to make a nod to all the boys wearing command red.  Q is of course my fave, especially in his completely over-the-top judge's robes from the very first episode, so this design has as much black in it as red. indoor, bright CF lighting Baroness X has been releasing some amazingly pretty fluid art polishes - instead of simple crème finishes, she's adding shimmer or flakies, and for X Marks the Spot she's added a handful of holo dust. outdoor, overcast daylight To get this look, I started with a layer of Julep Karmen, a fiery red foil that's been used several times in nail art experiments, painted thickly across a silicone mat.  I then added drips of OPI Glamour Game, a somewhat sheer champagne gold shimmer, and drips of X Marks the Spot.  When I had a big enough pool to work with, I folded the mat in half a couple of times, and tilted the mat on it's side to get the paint to flow and spread out. outdoor, overcast/shady daylight ...

And we're back to the final frontier! indoor, bright CF lighting My younger sib, every bit as nerdy as me, has been totally geeking out over my Star Trek The Next Generation nails, and gets all credit for this design.  Wesley Crusher is far from universally loved by the fan community, and people tend to either think he's a Gary Stu or that he's an entry point for younger fans.  Either way, his science brains and dedication in the face of being told to "shut up" (most certainly not the high point of dialogue) earned him a position as acting ensign, and that uniform design is pretty sweet.  outdoor, shady/overcast daylight For the wool blend of the jumpsuit, I've started with two smooth and easy coats of Different Dimension Twisted Fantasy.  The scattered holo sparkle makes this look heathered in low light, and the pale orchid microflakie shimmer (below) is just an added bonus. outdoor, shady daylight What I loved about this uniform is a nod to...

Star Trek The Next Generation is a goldmine of nail inspo, and I'm just loving the ongoing theme on my nails (and we're still loving the re-watch of the show at my house).  Next up is the endlessly determined Geordi La Forge. indoor, bright CF lighting I've started with a base of Heather's Hues Latte Love, a richly saturated chocolate brown with autumn-colored microflakes and a light touch of scattered holo dust.  This polish was an easy one-coater, with a thick formula that stayed exactly where I put it, no running or pooling in cuticles.  indoor, CF lighting Though we'd just watched an episode where he turns into a blacklit-glowing alien, and he has plenty of retrofuture off-duty outfits, the character is defined in many ways by his visor which of course had to be the inspo here.  The gold stripes of the visor are the short hashmarks from Lina Feeling Shapely 10, while the medium weight straight silver bars come from Maniology M053, both using metallic...

Partway through Season 2 of our Star Trek The Next Generation rewatch, my next nail inspiration became clear:  the distinctive asymmetrical curved V neckline of Counselor Deanna Troi's turquoise dress. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight The obvious choice for Troi's out-of-this-world dress was Literary Lacquers Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster , a pretty perfect bright ocean turquoise that's both a sparkling linear holo as well as one sprinkled with holo microglitters.  I considered using a neutral polish on the fingers with the negative-space areas, but instead let my slightly milky base coat, Nail Tek Formula 2, carry that job solo, and it turned out completely lovely.  window-filtered sunlight To get that neckline just right, I used the doubled arc and straight line designs from Lina Feeling Shapely 10.  I stamped first in PGGB to mark where I wanted the design to be, then painted my nails from that point outward.  When I was done, I stamped back over in...

The real reason I had to try out Sally Hansen Denim this week is that we've been on a huge Star Trek The Next Generation kick at our house and I have for sure found my nail art inspiration for the next while.  Many beloved things from youth end up aging quite badly, but this show is still a huge winner and has become our ideal quarantine entertainment.  It's fun, adventure-y, and smart, with occasionally brilliant/hilarious costuming choices, and I'm in utter love with the old-skool matte painting backgrounds for alien landscapes.  But the thing that's surprised me most, in a way I certainly did not appreciate as a teen, is how breath-of-fresh-air healthy it is.  People make huge mistakes with devastating consequences, the crew has to work around some utter jerks, there's loss and grief... but the mis-steps never get twisted into petty vengeance, and people successfully work through their issues like adults.  outdoor, overcast daylight Of course I had...

This month's prompt in the Sci-Fi Because Nails facebook group is dinosaurs, and you know there's going to be a trove of awesome stamping designs going on in there!  Obviously the very first thing I thought of: I'm not going to pretend to be modest here, I nailed the crap outta this one: outdoor, afternoon sunlight For a deep jungle green base I started with Tonic You'll Move Mountains, and for the dinosaur hide base I instead started with a stone grey crelly on my middle fingers.  The amazingly detailed velociraptor eye is from the top image on HeHe 086, part of their delightful science series of stamping plates.  Though the design is complex with very fine lines, I had no trouble picking it up on the first try. indoor, CF lighting The eye was stamped in black, then filled in with Esmaltes da Kelly Pleiades on the stamper head before placing it on the nail.  The leaves are from different parts of MoYou London Tropical plates 06 and 12, using Esmalt...

Magnetic polishes are super trendy right now, and as if gorgeously flashing cat's eye shine wasn't enough, several of my fave makers turning out really interesting combinations of shimmer + flakes + holo effects in their new magnetics.  For the past few months, Shleee Polish has sprinkled some of these interestingly complex magnetics into her weekly releases, and this was the bottle I immediately thought of with the "blue + sci-fi" challenge theme I've been working on lately. indoor, bright CF lighting Cosmological is easily one of the most accurately-named polishes in my whole stash.  Before the magnet hits it (or in the bottle, or on the first coat), it's an inky, smoky navy blue with a dusting of holo sparkle, microscopic red glitters, and a pretty purple duochrome flash. indoor, bright CF lighting The magnet draws most, but not all, of the blue shimmer toward it, leaving behind that inky, near-black base spangled with the holo and microglitter...

For my second round of blues, I switched up to a bright, saturated true-blue, with Heather's Hues The Deepest Kind of Love. indoor, bright CF lighting March's Polish Pick-Up theme was books, and this one takes its inspiration from 'Where the Red Fern Grows,' which as a life-long animal lover and book nerd I'm sheepishly admitting that I've never read. window-filtered overcast daylight Deepest is a gorgeous cobalt blue jelly filled with green iridescent flakes of both standard flakie & microflake sizes.  I think there's also a shimmer in there that's somewhat duochromatic - there's a very obvious purple shift in the bottle, but the below pic is as close as I ever came to seeing it on the nail. window-filtered afternoon daylight Blue polishes are often described as having a sulphuric odor to them, which I rarely notice - this one has a subtle whiff, but nowhere near enough to be off-putting indoor, bright CF lighting As with...

One of my facebook groups has a prompt for the month of June of sci-fi nails in blue, and with that focusing my aim toward one particular part of my untried mountain, it's more than past time for me to rifle through my blues... indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish keeps getting me with both her aesthetic and her inspiration choices.  It's Unlike Us is a quote from and a nod to the inhuman presence inside "the shimmer" (omg polish pun!) from the film 'Annihilation'.  It's a dusky, greyed denim blue filled to the brim with red-to-copper-to-gold aurora shimmer, and dusted wish scattered holo particles. outdoor, bright sunlight The shimmer here truly changes the polish based on the lighting conditions.  In bright light as above, I saw a bright band of contrasting shimmer shining as a stripe down the center of the darker base, rocking that "glowing from within" thing.  In lower light as below, the shimmer really blended into the base,...

I was off to see Alien Covenant this weekend, which neatly coincided with an Alien mani challenge on the Shleee Polish Facebook group, so my nails dressed up for the occasion. indoor, bright CF lighting Nostromo, named of course for the ship that found itself in trouble in the 1979 film, is a blackened teal shimmer sprinkled with holo flake that is utterly reminiscent of starlight gleaming on the sleeping ship .  Seriously, one of the best inspiration results ever!  It was mostly opaque in one coat, but deepened up and became flawlessly opaque with two.  The shimmer & holo flake have a tendency to stick to the skin, so careful painting that minimizes a need for cleanup is a good idea, but this polish did not stain my skin or cuticles at all. indoor, bright CF lighting For my fandom look, I added an accent nail with a pointed ellipse as a call-out to the glowing green line in both the Alien and Aliens posters, using Different Dimension Saber That, a neon gr...