Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Winter is just absolutely the worst time of year to try and show off a nice nail polish.  When the work day is a lot longer than the day light, you're pretty well stuck with indoor and bottle shots... until a coworker informs you of some amazingly cool celestial phenomenon happening right outside , prompting you to get a nice sunlight photo of your coincidentally celestially-named polish.   outdoor, bright direct sunlight Chasing Northern Lights was Pahlish's contribution to the December 2015 Holo Hookup box (blast from the past, yo!).  It's a cool greenish-leaning bronze linear holographic with a subtly duochromatic contrast shimmer that goes from coppery (center of my pinky) to gold to chartreuse (index finger) at angles.  I'm wearing 2 coats of this smooth perfect formula for complete opacity. Rating:  4 out of 5 stars, this is a lovely edgy neutral color that was very flattering on my skin tone.  The only flaw was that it wore a little quickly, but...

One good fall leaf deserves another, and this time I went a touch darker in the same red-bronze-gold color palette.   indoor, bright CF lighting About 5 years ago, Parrot Polish released a multichrome collection that was themed around lady pirates.  Always a sucker for a beautiful shifter and not having anything like this one, I picked up Lady Elizabeth Killigrew from the set. outdoor, shady daylight LEK appears to be the same color shift as my beloved Mysterious Mars stamping polish that I used in my last look - in direct light, it's a warm brick- or brown-leaning red, which shifts to coppery bronze and gold at angles, and green at the farthest end of the shift.   indoor, bright CF lighting This is a truly old-skool type duochrome polish, where the shifty shimmer itself is wholly responsible for the color, and the base is a barely-there sheer grey.  This means it takes 3 coats to get to full opacity, but thankfully each coat goes on smooth and even. ...

 I reached for a metallic color this week, and after looking through the bins of silver and gold, spotted just what I wanted in the copper section. indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish continues to be one of the absolute queens of shimmery goodness.   outdoor, afternoon daylight Forgotten Things starts with a super sheer, barely smoke-tinted base.  It took 3 thin coats to build up to opacity, so it would very easily serve as a topper - this would look smashing over any shade of grey all the way through to black, or a very dark red. indoor, bright CF lighting In direct light, Forgotten Things is a beautiful, rich copper.  It quickly shifts over to bronze at a slight angle - easily evident across just the curve of my nails - and hits a bright peridot green at longer angles.  Scattered across that is a really nice holo flake, whose silver vanishes into the metallic base in low light, then leaps into bright rainbows in bright light (below). outdoor, afterno...

 I ran away to Cape May NJ this past weekend to go check out the amazing variety of birds migrating through this time of year, so my nails of course needed to match. indoor, CF lighting I'm reaching way back into the vault here - I think I bought this polish back in the 90s.  The brand name is CQ2, and I'm not sure I've ever seen it before or since, with the only name being the number 253 on the back.  It's a pearlescent chromed-out warm gold-to-cool pink duochrome that needed 3 thin coats to get to the opacity you see here.  It's definitely from the days before 5-free, with the distinct paint aroma and slightly thin formula.  I've topped it with a cute birds perched along a wire image from Nicole Diary L-10. American Oystercatchers flying over the sound The birds were occupying my camera, so I didn't get many pics of this nail art look, but I had a wonderful time! ~Michelle 

I keep finding nail inspiration in lots of unusual places lately.  My super weird work schedule means that I'm in quasi-isolation most of the time, just like everyone else, so I welcome all the help from non-standard sources!  I was recently perusing another blogger's destash and found this beauty, and finally remembered oh wait, I already have that!! indoor, CF lighting Great Lakes Lacquer released Creatures of Night Brought to Light! with last year's August PPU, and it's themed around one of my all-time fave movies, The Last Unicorn. outdoor, bright sunlight This polish is a real chameleon.  The base is an inky dark cool-toned violet, but the duochromatic shimmer is a warm plum wine.  Indoors, most of the time it looked like a smoky amethyst with a brighter central flash. indoor, bright CF lighting With brighter light and any angles, though, the shimmer blazes into metallic copper, and then almost to green.  outdoor, bright sunlight I'm...

A couple of years ago, I swatched polishes for a while alternating between fun flashy things and neutral colors.  The experiment didn't last for the whole year, but I certainly did get around to trying out more of my browns and golds and nude colors, so I'm going to give that a whirl again this year.  We'll see how long it lasts, but a good palate cleanser reminds me of why I grabbed all these pretty but more office appropriate shades in the first place. indoor, CF lighting One of OPI's all time best ever holiday collections was the 2012 James Bond-themed Skyfall set. Yeah, the obligatory reds made their appearance as required for an OPI holiday shindig, but there were plenty of really lovely and unusual things that arrived alongside them.  A few of them, including On Her Majesty's Secret Service contained this lovely pink/green/golden shifty glass fleck shimmer.  This one is The World is Not Enough, OHMSS's bronze-taupe sister. indoor, bright CF ligh...

Halloween may be over, but I'm now totally in the mood for warm, rich fall colors, so when the man suggested red, I grabbed a deep, dark one. indoor, bright CF lighting Mercury in Retrograde, from the 2018 April PPU, is so far my only Supernatural Lacquer.  This beauty is a slightly blackened red with scattered holo and ultrachome flakies thrown in. outdoor, overcast daylight It also has a fairly amazing coppery shift when the light hits just right. indoor, CF lighting I'm wearing 2 coats here, which brought this to complete opacity.  The formula was slightly thicker than I usually like, but it leveled perfectly and stayed where I put it without pooling or running, so I'll call the thickness a plus here. outdoor, overcast daylight It's the sort of thing that has a slightly different appearance in all lighting conditions, with either the flakies or the duochrome effect or the holo shining a little brighter in turn. indoor, CF lighting outd...

Mystery polishes aren't so much my jam - I have a bajillion untrieds to get through, and when your collection gets to a certain size, you really give everything a critical eye as to whether you already have something similar.  When Tonic announced earlier this year that she was cleaning out the closet of a bunch of prototypes, though, I bought everything I could. indoor, CF lighting This is an easy fave of the prototypes I received - a deep charcoal grey based linear holo with a gorgeous red to bronze to green metallic multichrome. outdoor, indirect daylight Unlike a few others I recieved, this prototype has no number or other marking.  I'm not completely sure what final polish it was an in-process study for - it's not quite Witchy Woman or Ninja Pumpkin, and I'm well aware those two aren't anything alike, but I think this is somewhere in between.  outdoor, indirect/overcast daylight This polish is shifty as all get-out, going from a deep scarlet i...

Once in a very long while, Vapid has released a single LE polish for a couple of days as a preorder, never to be seen again.  The first of these, Ride or Die, was released before I was into Vapid and has since acquired legendary status in the polish community, going for crazy money at auction.  I was lucky enough to snap up the other two as they came out, but there they sit on Mount Untried. indoor, CF lighting Each of these 3 LEs are super linear holographic polishes with a beautiful metallic chrome multichromatic finish.  The first of the two I have, Cyber Punk, starts off as a lovely light wine/dark pink when viewed directly... outdoor, shady & overcast daylight Then shifts toward a more peachy, warm, baby pink... indoor, CF lighting Then continues warming up past peach and on into gold... window-filtered bright afternoon daylight And finally over to bronze with a suggestion of green at the furthest angles. indoor, bright CF lighting ...

My book club's recent pick was Madeline Miller's utterly fantastic Circe.  The dramatic cover illustration immediately suggested some matching nail art. The bold black and bronze stylized design is of course very reminiscent of ancient greek pottery, so my stamping design matches the color scheme and theme of the book cover, using a few elements from the story.  Femme Fatale Defiled in Gold provided the perfect base, somewhere between bronze and copper, in 2 easy coats.  My left hand has a portrait of the witch herself from MoYou London Artist 26, plus a 3 headed hydra from Xiuya 22 (a knockoff of MYL's greek mythology series).  My right hand has the minotaur from that same plate, and the greek keys and waves came from Xiuya 20. The book is fantastic, highly recommended! ~Michelle