Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 For this month's book club, my group picked The Long Haul by Finn Murphy. indoor, bright CF lighting I've started with a base of sky blue crème and dusty gold for this story about a long-haul trucker driving across the US, then added the US map, mountains, truck, and highways that feature throughout the book. Happy reading! ~Michelle 

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&quo

 One good "oops batch" deserves another, and I just so happen to have one vastly different than the previous example. indoor, bright CF lighting Crystal Skull was an "oops batch" released in May 2015, and is another one I'm not at all sure what it originally started as.  This is a sea-glass steel blue base filled to the brim with a greenish-gold shimmer and holographic glitters in one or two sizes. outdoor, bright daylight The shimmer overlay tilts the overall look toward aqua rather than blue, and it's prominent in both bright and lower lighting. indoor, shady/indirect daylight The holo glitters add a bit of texture to this polish, and I needed 2 layers of topcoat to smooth things out. indoor, bright CF lighting But wow do those glitters catch any possible glint of light and throw it back in beautiful sparkly rainbows!  This style of glitter is an absolute calling card for Femme Fatale, though she doesn't do as many of them anymore.  indoor, bright dire

 Well after something delicate and floral, time to swing right on over to midnight vampy! indoor, bright CF lighting Occasionally some makers, including Femme Fatale, will release "oops batches" where a polish didn't turn out as expected, but the artist kept adding to & tweaking the container until something interesting resulted.  Such things don't have a set formula and are by nature impossible to recreate.  Marble Keys was one such "oops" from November 2015. outdoor, overcast daylight Marble Keys starts out with a smoky charcoal base, a fairly neutral off-black (neither cool nor warm on its own).  The base is sheer and required 3 coats to build up to opacity, but was much more forgiving on clean-up than an opaque black base would have been. indoor, bright CF lighting Layered over this is a coarse, not quite chunky shimmer in a deep malachite green.  It's a little more teal-leaning than emerald, but not at all aquamarine, and is much more GREEN in v

Pink isn't my usual jam, though it often looks flattering on most skin tones including mine.  I'm drawn more to vampy or bright or unusual colors, not traditional ones... but a whole row of pink polishes inhabits my storage rack, most of them because they had a little something extra. indoor, bright CF lighting for all photos Femme Fatale created Midnight Masquerade as a store exclusive for Singapore stockist Mei Mei's Signatures back in 2014.  It's a rich, warm-leaning pink with a gorgeous flash of gold metallic shimmer, and a very light sprinkling of scattered holo dust. Just one medium coat provides full coverage, though I'm showing 2 thin coats here.  Midnight Masquerade has an utterly flawless formula with minimal cleanup needed.  Rating:  yet another really good 4 out of 5 stars for my old skool Femmes.  A seriously lovely polish, even if it's more delicate and feminine than what I usually reach for.  I had full intention of stamping this with a Valentine&

With so many untried Femme Fatale polishes to choose from, it's easy to select a thoroughly different look and mood with each example of my journey through the oldest parts of my collection indoor, CF lighting for all photos Falling Glacier was part of Femme Fatale's 2014 Autumn release, and is the only thing I have from that group.  I've filed it under "grey" since the base is a sheer pale grey, but it's really all about the super bright aqua shimmer.  This arc of metallic, electric aqua was visible in all lighting, and is more saturated and vibrant than the pics show. This one additionally has a lightly sparkling, fine milled holo just barely over the line to having a linear arc, most visible in bright light and utterly vanishing in lower light.  I'm wearing 3 coats here to achieve visual opacity, and each of them were very smooth and even.  Rating:  a lovely 4 out of 5 stars.  Formula and color like this is what made me fall thoroughly in love with Femm