Sweet Baby Octopolish!

For my last polish for Femme Fatale February, I'd been growing out my nails a bit to show off a thermal polish to best effect... and then a major cleaning project at home resulted in several chips & breaks on my swatching hand, so for this post Cindy takes the spotlight. indoor, bright CF lighting Thermals are notorious for having a finite shelf life, typically guaranteed to be working well for 6 months.  Malachite, released as a color of the month in November 2021 is my oldest untried thermal from Femme Fatale, and it's still working perfectly fine 15 months later. indoor, bright CF lighting Between the awkwardness of shooting the camera with my left hand, and the notorious trickiness of accurate color capture of teals, I find the bottle look to not be completely accurate, though the color on my nails certainly is.  Malachite is a very well-named polish, a bright earthy green when warm (above) and a deep emerald forest when cold (below), packed with "ocean flakies...

 The weather is turning a little crisp lately, and my nails are a touch longer than I usually keep them, so clearly it's thermal time! indoor, bright CF lighting Femme Fatale released Welkin at Dusk as an exclusive for her fan group in September 2020, and though thermal nail polishes are really only guaranteed to transition for 6 months, I had zero troubles with this shade a year later.   indoor, window-filtered daylight + office fluorescent lighting Welkin is an absolutely beautiful color combo, transitioning from a teal-leaning blue when warm to a deep indigo sapphire when cool.  There's chunky holo dust and tiny holo glitters nicely visible in any point of the thermal transition, yet this took only 2 coats to result in very good opacity even while in  the warm state. indoor, bright CF lighting Unfortunately for me, I just don't think I've done this polish justice with these pics.  For a bunch of reasons I just didn't devote time to getting good pics, so ...

 I already knew right away what I'd be wearing for St Paddy's Day this year: outdoor, bright direct sunlight Oh YESSSSS.  Let's do that again, shall we? indoor, window-filtered indirect daylight I am an inveterate green lover, so when Lucky 13 dropped Holy Mother-Forking Shirtballs with this past December's PPU, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd need to snap it up tout suite. indoor, bright CF lighting Tonal thermals are typically my favorite - if things switch between two shades of the same color, there's no chance of weird intermediates and it's always pretty - but this one kicks that up a notch by being a tri-thermal.  At it's coldest, Shirtballs is a richly saturated kelly green (as in the bottle above, and on the very tips of my middle and ring fingers).  A little warmer and it leans teal, a grassy oceanic green (the rest of my middle and ring fingers).  Warmest, it's a pale, barely-there mint. outdoor, bright sunlight Added to that lovely m...

 This week, 2 things happened that in combo can't be denied: the weather turned cool, and my nails were longer than I usually wear them, so a thermal polish was clearly necessary. indoor, bright CF lighting Deminator - named for the creator of Baroness X herself - is a pink (warm) to purple (cold) thermal that also has a healthy smattering of iridescent flakies and a hefty dose of Clarins 230 red-to-green pigment. outdoor, overcast daylight I have at least one other pink-to-purple thermal, which is probably why this one was untried for a while.  That other one feels candy-colored, a bit more girly than I typically go for, so this one was on hold while I thought it was super close.  Not so!  Deminator's base appears to be ever so slightly dusty, just a touch greyed out, so instead of bubblegum-to-grape, this looks on me like mauve-to-eggplant.  Just a touch more adult and a lot more wearable on my skintone.   outdoor, bright sunlight As with other therm...

 With my nails grown out a bit longer than usual to make enough room for Halloween nail art, plus the cooler temperatures lately, reaching for a thermal was the obvious plan. window-filtered afternoon daylight Wrapped in a Cloud is part of Femme Fatale's latest release (what??  I'm not leaving a new polish to languis untried for months??), based off of a classical painting with lots of dark, smoky earth tones.  Above, in the coldest state, it's a deeply inky teal. window-filtered bright daylight The announcement for this color said it was only "technically" a tri-thermal, and that 3 distinct color states wouldn't be obvious.  While at no point did I ever see 3 bands of color at one time on my nails, I did in fact notice 3 different colors overall.  In the warmest state, Cloud is a cool-toned concrete grey that's unfortunately much more sheer and patchy-looking than either of the other states - While 2 medium thick coats were perfectly opaque while painting...

One good thermal deserves another, of course, and this one fit in with my plan to alternate between traditional and non-traditional colors (yeah, right, this is nowhere near "neutral"). indoor, bright CF lighting Delush Polish is known for their glitterbombs - big circles and chunky shapes in tinted bases that somehow manage to look put together and elegant instead of like a confetti party.  This is my first bottle from them, and in addition to the trademark glitters, this one is a red-to-wine thermal. window-filtered bright sunlight Slice of Life was a subtle thermal in the swatch photos floating around PPU back in October 2018 - this one is from the Villains theme month, and is inspired by Dexter.  I don't know if my bottle has died in an in-between zone or if this is just how it's always been, but I could discern no thermal shift at all.  outdoor, bright sunlight Instead of a funky french tip change effect, Slice of Life seemed to have a subtle du...

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...

It's been plenty frosty for a good month now, and my nails are just a scoch longer than usual, so it's thermal weather! indoor, bright CF lighting Emily de Molly has made a handful of really pretty tonal thermals lately (I've debated quite a bit over which of the berry to purple ones I most need), including More or Less.  This one is a deep forest green when cold: window-filtered daylight That shifts over to a soft cadet blue when warm: window-filtered daylight In addition to a scattering of ultra teeny holo glitters, there's a very fine golden shimmer running throughout that I think helps visually blend out the transition between the states. outdoor, bright afternoon daylight The result is a smooth, subtle transition from blue to green, more a gradient look rather than a starkly demarcated "funky french tip" effect. window-filtered bright afternoon daylight I'm wearing 2 smooth coats here for total opacity.  The formula was v...

While All Halloween All Month didn't work out this year (hey, sometimes life refuses to let you participate in fun stuff), I think I can work in at least a few holiday looks in the next week or so! indoor, bright CF lighting for both Last time I wore Baroness X Ghastly  (2 years ago, and this thermal is going strong!), the barely grey tint of the completely warm state didn't work so much for my skin tone, though I loved the shimmers and thermal shift.  This year, I layered 1 thick coat of Ghastly on top of 1.5 coats Sinful Colors Peppered Amazon, a medium kelly green polish.  My pics here show mostly the warm state with just a suggestion of the cooler midnight green on my tips, but IRL this was more dramatic.  The jack o'lantern design on my accent nail is from XXL-03, stamped in El Corazon Kaleidoscope Copper Flame. Happy Halloween! ~Michelle

With some cool snaps lately,and my nails being just the right length, it's definitely thermal weather. indoor, bright CF lighting Baroness X has really been knocking this year's mystery series out of the park, with each box having one Clarins 230 shimmer polish and one "sister UP" polish, plus a little treat or two.  The August box, Rick & Morty themed, might be my fave so far.  window-filtered daylight Portal Gun starts with a black-to-colorless thermal base that builds in 3 coats to a milky, slightly smoky translucency rather than being clear.  Baroness X has played with different ingredients in these black-to-clear thermals, and this one is a clear winner for me (a stunner compared to the somewhat similar  Ghastly ).  outdoor, overcast daylight The black base of the cold state makes the flakies and sister UP shimmer into a vampy teal-green shifting blue to purple around the edges. indoor, CF lighting As the base warms up and become...