Sweet Baby Octopolish!

For a little over a month now, Pahlish has released 2 or 3 one-time-only shades each Friday, their "bespoke batches."  Coyote & The Cloud is the first of these I've picked up. indoor CF lighting Coyote is a dusty stormcloud-blue-grey crelly filled with metallic bronze flakes.  The flakes were amazing in the bottle, and a little more subtle on the nail. indirect, cloudy sunlight The formula and finish reminded me a whole lot of butter London's Two-Fingered Salute: the creamy base definitely needed 3 coats for opacity, but by the 3rd coat things start getting a little clumpy.  I'm just too impatient to let each coat DRY for 10 minutes before tossing on the next one. same cloudy afternoon On the ring finger above, you can see that this isn't a straight crème finish; there's a pretty bit of translucency to this color. Rating 3 out of 5 stars.  The formula gave me some trouble, but those flakes are just lovely.  The greyed-out...

KB shimmer's big collections are typically pretty varied - at least one each of a crème, a glitter bomb, and lately a holo - so there's often at least one that strikes my fancy.  Plum Tuckered Out was a collaboration shade with Pointless Cafe. PTO is a vampy take on the "radiant orchid color of the year" business.  It's definitely plum, far more red than a royal purple, and though it was richly dark, it never pulled a surprise-black on me.  The first coat of this crelly was sheer-to-streaky, but the second evened things right out.  I eventually did about 2 and a half, but a 3rd coat probably would have been a better idea. outdoor, full sunlight Tucked within the plum base is a generous scattering of cobalt blue chunky shimmer that's more obvious in bright light.  I do wish the blue fire was able to peek out of the base more, but it is a really pretty contrast. same direct sunlight Wear time was surprisingly good, considering how nearly jelly-l...

The Supernova collection from Brazilian maker Ludurana is a group of linear holos, with most of them also being somewhat duochromatic.  This one is Onda de Luz (in english: Ray of Light). indoor CF lighting OdL is a warm copper-to-rose subtle duochrome with a fine linear holo - the holo particles are very small, so this dries glass-smooth, and the holo has a lovely sparkling quality.  The holo isn't at all shy, and is at least subtly visible in all but very low light.  The holo flame is mostly the yellow-green part of the rainbow, which is a nice pop of contrast against the rosy coral base color. direct sunlight The fineness of the holo particles mean that they don't particularly grey out the base color when they're not obvious, and the low-light look is a sort of pearly glow. indoor, indirect late afternoon sunlight Lower light of course shows off the duochrome shift between rose and copper optimally... but super bright light amps up a copper blaze. ...

Glitter Gal is known for their holos, and possibly the most famous is their blackened green Lizard Belly. indoor CF lighting I've mentioned before that I often let the man pick a general color (hey, with this many untrieds, it's a way to narrow down the options), and when he said "black," and I was feeling more summery than flat midnight, this was one of the options.  In bright, intense light, Lizard Belly is most definitely green.  The majority of the time, though, it looks to be more of an earthy charcoal color.  The bottle shot up top is the greenest my camera would capture. outdoor, overcast sunlight Like Jen of  The Polishaholic  has been known to say, this is "holo like woah."  In almost all lighting, subtle or bright, there's at least the suggestion of a rainbow shimmering beneath the surface.  The pretty oil slick sheen makes up for the fact that most of the time on me, LB is deep grey and not at all recognizably green. flash ...

Oh sweet, sweet Scarab.   I adore Illamasqua's polishes (well, I've got two, so it's plural), and I love red like I love puppies, so getting Scarab was a no brainer. Now, when I pulled out the bottle, I thought it looked a lot like Orly Smolder, so that's what you're seeing on my index finger.  So it's a post, with a bit of comparison content (I eventually just went over my pointer with a coat of Scarab). This color is killer. It's at the more maroon end of burgundy, with a gorgeous flash, and it's just magnificent. Flourescent sunlight FLASH! One of my top 5 polishes (as if I could just pick 5 of my babies).   I love a good red, and this one coater is everything the doctor could order.  Killer pigmentation, easy application, the formula is to die for. -S.

NYC (or New York Color) is a drugstore brand with both classic and trendy colors, and a quick-dry topcoat that plenty of people on ye old interwebs swear by.  Empire State Blue is the first I've tried from them. indoor CF lighting ESB is a medium cobalt blue packed with emerald/aqua shimmer. The bottle shot up top is in fact accurate, the polish is BLUE and not teal, but the carribean shimmer absolutely makes this lean teal in most lights.  Plenty of times, there's blue around the edges of the nail (again, in the first pic) with a firey green heart, but in other lighting, it's overall a teal-y shimmer. indoor office fluorescents It goes on plenty smooth, dries quickly, and has a perfectly fine formula - no crazy puddling in the cuticles or thick gloopy mess. indoor indirect sunlight Weirdly enough, when putting on topcoat, it was almost like the TC wanted to pull and slide off, as though this had its own TC already slicking it up.  No matter, a thic...

I've mentioned before my sadness over not becoming a polish junkie until well after Llarowe's  P-series LE polishes were sold out , so imagine the rush to snap them up when she re-released them earlier this year.  Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, this stuff doesn't at all match the pics of what the original batch was, so I still don't  have that lemming.  Fortunately, however, what I did end up with is lovely anyway, and rather helps out with a different lemming altogether. indoor CF lighting P47 is a rich berry-red jelly, full of Clarins 230/Max Factor Fantasy Fire-type ruby-to-emerald color shifting shimmer.  2 coats got me to this point, and I certainly don't think it needed more than that, but as with all jellies, the more coats, the richer the color.  Described as being a vampy red, it does sometimes have a darker on the edges feel to it, but always with a little glow of embers. outdoor, late afternoon sunlight That lit-from-within glow j...