Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 Our most recent book club pick was Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan, a memoir about surfing and life.  Though the subject didn't appeal to me at first (neither nonfiction in general nor autobiographies in specific are my cuppa), the book is genuinely fantastic, and I wanted to pull out the stops for our meet-up.  And it occurred to me I had a plate for that... outdoor, bright daylight for both I've started here with 2 coats of Fancy Gloss Lace, a soft pink that she sells as a "sheer" and we can certainly debate whether this is jelly vs crelly.  In any case, you'd need perhaps 4 coats for opacity, which is not actually what it's for IMO.  This polish is absolutely the best ever "my nails but better" shade at just a couple coats.  The sheerness keeps it neutral to the point I think it'd provide an utterly perfect clean nail art base on any skin tone. KADS Nature 011 is a square plate with 4 images of waves crashing in 3 layers, which means you ...

 Just a few weeks ago, I saw a stunning swatch pic in the facebook dupes/comparisons group that led me (and I think several others) down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what we were looking at.  Turns out that the original pic was both photoshopped all to hell and from a brand that's no longer active... but several people suggested alternates, including this: indoor, CF lighting Well, hellooooo there, vampy dream. outdoor, bright sunlight The end result of all the image searching is that Sally Hansen released a whole red collection in 2018, several of which weren't truly red, and that one of which was reported as a dead-on dupe for OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, with a more opaque and smooth formula.  Oktoberfest is one of the ones that got away - it looked identical to Germanicure in the bottle, and by the time I realized I'd like both, it was going for crazy prices on ebay.  For a mere $5, I was more than willing to take this possible dupe for a spin. outdoo...

Not too long ago, Suzy was wearing a truly amazing blue in a pic she sent, and I immediately jumped on ebay to grab a bottle or two. indoor, CF lighting Sally Hansen released Denim along with a dozen or so other Insta-dri colors in a tie-in with Crayola.  It's a deeply saturated, true cobalt blue that's fully opaque in one easy coat. outdoor, shady & overcast light There's a whole rabid fan base around a different Sally Hansen blue crème, Pacific Blue, supposed to be a smooth one-coater with a drop-dead perfect formula, much mourned when SH felt the need to change to a totally different polish with the same name a handful of years ago.  As far as I can tell, Denim is just a tiny touch darker than Pacific Blue, so this may scratch that itch if you don't want to pay crazy HTF prices for the original.  The other blue in the Crayola collection, Cerulean, appears to be a touch lighter than Pacific Blue, and I'm trying to convince myself I don't need b...

Despite my valiant attempts to be on a no-buy, I keep getting sucked in by bottles that call to me, and someone's recent super affordable RBL destash was one clear example.  In her sales post, she had a bottle of **faded** Black Russian, where the burning embers of the red glitters had bled out, leaving them sorta silver and the base more smoky than black.  I hadn't considered this was possible, and rushed to grab what I'd picked up years ago as a close-enough dupe to this sold out LE, and it was just fine. indoor, bright CF lighting Piggy Polish Midnight Fireflies is an only slightly off-black jelly that is filled to the brim with extremely tiny metallic red microglitters, absolutely a smoldering embers in the smoke look. outdoor, bright sunlight The formula on this was quite nice, fully opaque in 2.5 coats, and with a density that stayed where I put it - no pooling in my cuticles (thank goodness because you know black is a PITA to clean up) or balding (which i...

I was going out this Friday with the work crew, and ended up doing stamping designs for everyone... so my stamping game had to be done and sharp before getting to the party! indoor, bright CF lighting Hard Candy exploded on the scene back in the day when a celebrity wore Sky, a creamy sky blue, on late-night tv.  When they released their anniversary collection of back-in-the-day faves a few years ago, this therefore had to be one of my picks.  outdoor, direct sunlight Despite the pale pastel, only 2 coats are necessary for utter opacity.  The first coat goes on a little thicker than ideal, with visibly obvious streakiness.  The second coat perfectly levels everything out, though, and the end result is an overall "plumper" look than I usually go for on my nails, but with ultimately flawless coverage. indoor, CF lighting Within Sky's crème formula hides a bright, finely milled, electric blue shimmer that shows nicely on the sides of the bottle (above)...

Now that we're at the first of the summer, and the sun finally came out for more than a brief peek, I was feeling some bright summertime color explosion.  But not neon, because that just isn't my jam. outdoor, bright sunlight Enchanted Polish March 2014 is as close to neon as I usually wear, a cheerfully bright chartreuse green holo.  I'm wearing two coats here, after which I applied decals stamped in black and filled in with Emily de Molly & Esmaltes da Kelly crèmes.  Images are from KADS Flower 015, a stamping plate that was an instant must-buy the moment I saw it. KADS is a budget plate maker that's usually shipped from China.  I've seen them offered on Ali Express, but I always prefer to buy Chinese goods from ebay - seller communication and shipping times end up much better for me.  KADS Flower 015 is an utterly gorgeous set of 9 images that are an insect or butterfly on the left half, metamorphosing to sprays of flowers on the righ...

For this month's selection, my book club picked 'H is for Hawk' by Helen Macdonald , easily one of my most favorite books I read last year, highly recommended for animal lovers, appreciators of gorgeous wordsmithing, and book-reading humans in general.  Since I'd loved the book so much, I of course felt the need to put together themed nail art for the club meeting. indoor, bright CF lighting The base color is Llarowe Shroom With a View, a fave of plenty of folks back when it came out in 2015 (yet again, years for me to use pretties in my stash!).  It has a rich scattered holo finish of the type that you can usually only find in a England's offerings, and a deep taupe base color that has to be one of the classiest modern neutrals I own.  Two thin coats brought this to complete opacity, and the formula was great. indoor, CF lighting To create a likeness of Mabel, the Northern Goshawk featured in the book, I've stamped using the feathers pattern from Ni...

Plenty of times, I've seen someone else's swatch of an untried in my own stash that just puts it in a whole new light.  This week's WOW moment was the potential of layering, and the apparently rather divided internet opinion on Sinful Colors Devil's stare. indoor, CF lighting Devil's Stare is a fiery coral-red jelly liberally sprinkled with iridescent shards and microglitters - it's pretty clearly the hot version of Green Ocean.  Since that one is kinda meh on its own but amazing as a topper , I felt more than a little foolish to not realize the same was true of Devil's Stare until Manigeek's efforts to  make what she thought was an ugly polish pretty . indirect daylight And poof!  A mani idea was born.  My middle and ring fingers have 3 coats of Devil's Stare, while all other fingers have one and a half coats of Llarowe Hot Summer Nights, a vampy blackened wine shimmer.  Devil has a sticky formula that needs a little dabbing to get a dec...

Once upon a time, I sent my partner off on a walmart quest to find some of the Hard Candy anniversary polishes, and while the picked-over selection made for only partial success, he grabbed a handful of these slender test tubes in colors he liked.  I always have a soft spot in my heart for these now. indoor, bright CF lighting Cosmic Love Affair is a deeply saturated sapphire blue glassfleck in a navy blue base.  The shimmers shift over to purple at angles, with nothing in between and nothing beyond - a true duo- and not multichrome. indoor, bright CF lighting at a long angle to the bottle While the macro pics make this look like a glitter, nope, these shimmer particles didn't give me any grief during removal, and the formula was utter perfection - a one coat wonder, as long as you paint carefully to avoid the drama of a mess cleanup on a blue this dark is going to be. indirect daylight To compliment the blue-to-purple midnight, I've stamped using El Corazon H...

The day after Christmas, my partner and I hopped on a plane to go spend time with family in Colorado through New Year's Eve.  When I go out of town, I never take super special LE polishes, the sort that would be impossible to replace if they got lost out of my luggage.  For the most sparkle-tastic holiday of the year, I wanted to look classy but blingy.  A good stamping plate and some sadly ignored mainstream polishes worked out perfectly! window-filtered overcast daylight First up, for the trip out, I wore Sinful Colors Haute Koffee.  Haute is a luscious, deep, dark, vampy wine with a beautiful shimmer that's utterly hidden by the velvety matte finish.  This is absolutely one of those polishes that you can wear 2 different ways, and would look contrasty enough to be pretty with part of each nail painted in glossy topcoat and part left matte.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, then stamped with a paisley-esque stripe design from Creative Shop 77 using Emily d...

I've been mesmerized by a whole bunch of Russian blogger IG videos where drops of contrasting paint swirled into a base color on the nail make amazing marble patterns effortlessly, and because they make it look so easy I figured I could give it a go. indoor, CF lighting While the macro shots highlight a few inconsistencies, at normal viewing length I was super pleased with these, and got tons of compliments. indoor, bright CF lighting Sky is a Walmart exclusive, part of the anniversary re-release polishes that launched there last year. The pretty electric blue shimmer visible in the bottle above is extremely subtle on the nail (even in macro pics this is a creme finish and not a shimmer).   The last time I tried out  one of these HC subtle shimmers, it had a hot mess of a formula.  Conveniently, thinner polishes with a slower dry time are apparently ideal for this kind of drag marbling on the nail technique, so this seemed like a good idea. outdoor, shady/o...

More with the event nails!  Friday, I got to go to a fantastic science + music program downtown, so like I've been doing lately, it was time to dress up with a theme. indoor, CF lighitng Over a base of berry jelly (there were subtle flakies in there that didn't particularly show up on the nail at any point), I've stamped in Born Pretty silver stamping polish using Blueness 039 plate.  I love the random swirling of music notations on this plate - each nail will look a little different, and there's no "right way up" so there's no challenge of lining up the design.  All of the Blueness plates I have were super cheap, but all stamp great - big thumbs up.  I added a layer of matte topcoat over the whole design, and I'm really pleased with how this turned out. fancy nails with my enormously fancy pink moonstone ring for our fancy theater tix ~Michelle