Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 Bees Knee's Lacquer has planned a gorgeous collection based on The Nevernight Chronicles for her holiday/BF release, and I just won my absolute fave of this batch in her fan group giveaway (kermit flail)!!!!!!!!!!!! indoor, CF lighting DEAD.  Obviously, this treasure jumped straight on my nails the moment it arrived, as it's 100% in my wheelhouse of polish love.  Let me count the ways:   outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight 1.  A luscious emerald green base 2.  Loaded in gorgeous "UP sister" contrast shimmer 3.  That is shifty as anything into aquas and blues, so all my fave colors at once.   outdoor, bright sunlight OH YES check out that shift, at which point it transforms from a sparkling emerald to a storm-tossed ocean.  Am I over the top here?  Heck yes, no shame. indoor, bright CF lighting I'm showing Lady of Storms at 3 coats, plus my usual topcoat.  This polish is sheer enough to allow the flashy shimmer to twinkle t...

So many releases lately have featured lush, beautiful, vampy cool-toned colors.  In an effort to hold on to my no/low buy, I went shopping in my stash... and I'm ready to kick myself for letting this one languish unloved for 3 years!! indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish has now and again released a few polishes themed to American Horror Story (in keeping with her creepy-cool aesthetic), and this one rolled out in 2017 along with the Cult season.  I'm showing version 2.0 here, so if this strikes your fancy be aware that there were subtle differences in the amount of shimmer in the 2 versions.  indoor, bright CF lighting Cult 2.0 is a luscious violet jelly filled to the brim with aurora and glassfleck shimmers.  The red flash of the aurora pulls the whole look firmly over to royal purple, and in all lighting it's either shimmer or borderline metallic in its flash. indoor, bright angled lighting This is indeed that flavor of aurora shimmer that comes close to a Cla...

 Ethereal Lacquer is probably the most accurately named polish brand I can think of - she has indeed made a name for herself in ethereally lovely, sheer, shimmery goodness.  Mystery polishes are never my jam... but she's sucked me into needing some on more than one occasion. indoor, bright CF lighting Moon Water was part of a Moon Dreams Mystery trio last year, and all 3 of them were just beautiful.   outdoor, afternoon daylight This is a sheer aqua jelly, slightly dusty and subtly greyed out - not at all a bright swimming pool turquoise.  That dustiness makes it feel more Fall to me, and I'm very sure helps keep it wearable - despite my beloved aqua colors sometimes causing the dreaded lobster hands look, there was never any of that here. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight I'm showing 3 coats here and still have a bit of VNL in any lighting that's not bright enough to cause the shimmer to catch fire.  This polish is, of course, all about that shimmer - a fin...

 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...

My first Halloween look this year ended up being my fave, because I loooooove glow in the dark polish, so for my last look I felt like coming back to that. indoor, CF lighting I've started here with a base of Dance Legend Price of Beauty , a pretty color that sits on the cusp of blue and silver, packed with iridescent microflakie shimmer and a really nice blue glow in the dark effect.  Unfortunately, it'd thickened up a lot in the years since I've used it last, and with a good squirt of thinner was back to good as new... but I must have overdone it because 100% of the flakes & GITD powder settled to the bottom of the bottle 2 days later, whoops! I've rolled the dice plenty of times on cheapo chinese-made stamping plates off ebay, and sometimes you get what you pay for but sometimes things work out great.  KADS plates are absolutely stellar about 80% of the time, so for about $2 it's well worth that roll.  Nature 032 was a big win for me, and I've used the p...

 Femme Fatale's September color of the month was named Pumpkin Patch, and if that's not demanding to be used in a Halloween mani, I don't know what is.  indoor, CF lighting I've recently seen a couple of utterly adorable layered plates for Halloween that included jack-o-lantern images, and the one I ended up with is Born Pretty Halloween L004.   The central row of images on this "spoopy cute" plate are various jack-o-lantern faces that could be used easily by themselves in black over an orange mani.  The image on the far left of this row is a perfectly sized pumpkin - my nails are by no means huge, but this fits great - and the far right is an outline for the same pumpkin.  The base image is large and unidirectional enough that I had no major struggles lining things up to place them, even more so considering that the orange polish I used isn't opaque enough solo, so needed 2 layers stamped. indoor, CF lighting My other hand had 2 totally different jack...

 A recent arrival to my stash was sitting on the desk ready to be filed away, but was so obviously perfect for Halloween that instead it got used right away. indoor, CF lighting Spiders and spiderwebs are one of my most favorite halloween designs.  Spooky + anything from the animal kingdom = winning, and all that layered over what's clearly the perfect Halloween season color for me just can't be beat.  Lina Spooklicious 01 was still out after providing images for my last mani, and the spiderwebs and spiders on it meant round 2 with this plate was an easy pick.  Webs are in MoYou London Mercury (chrome polishes are such a PITA but so worth it), and the spiders in El Corazon True Red. indoor, bright CF lighting The base for this look is 2 smooth coats of  OPI Black to Reality - I am clearly a sucker for exactly this shade of black-red, since it's about identical to China Glaze X, Trust Fund Just Call My Lawyer , and Vapid Ruffian - they're each close enough t...