Sweet Baby Octopolish!

The boy said, "something purple or rich or something," so I pulled this sparkly grackle-wing out of the stash:  Julep Reece. indoor, bright CF lighting Reece is most often exactly what you see above: a soft, nearly metallic grey with a lovely lavender-purple overtone, and a healthy smattering of holographic microglitter.  In brighter lighting, both the holo sparkle and that purple become much more vibrant. direct sunlight In lower lighting, though, a lovely earthy green duochrome comes out around the edges. indirect, shady sunlight And with some wacky hand positioning, the green takes over the purple almost entirely. This purple-to-green oil-slick iridescence is so lovely that it's of course not at all unique in my stash.  Wet N Wild Gray's Anatomy (itself  a known dupe for Deborah Lippmann Wicked Game ) and Zoya Ki have an identical shift to Reece. indirect, window-filtered sunlight The WnW is significantly more sheer than th

Early this year, Pretty Serious Cosmetics started a collection called "The Museum of Naileontology," with the idea that each polish is an "homage" (she doesn't ever call them dupes) to an old, hard to find classic.  In this past week's green nail polish haul from these guys, I picked up 2 of the 3 inaugural shades, and first up is The Dragon's Curse. indirect, window-filtered sunlight Dragon's Curse is a granny-smith-apple green full of a gorgeous ultrafine golden shimmer.  It's theoretically a nod to OPI's Creme de Menthe, or else Misa's Silk Robe - in either case, they're impossible to even find on ebay, let alone attempt to purchase one.   Kaz has both of them , so whichever one it secretly is, you know it's as close as we're all going to get. indirect, overcast light The formula on this was a little thicker than I'd like (no chance at all for thin coats), but it self-leveled perfectly, and was quite toleran

Since we decided to go check out the new Mad Max movie this weekend, and literally everything in that movie is on fire, I felt the need to badass it up a little to hit the theater. What we have here is my first ever attempt with nail vinyls (as opposed to just winging stuff with scotch tape), and I think it worked great.  It says "take one" in the title, because I'm quite sure that these flames will reappear sometime in the near future. I went with Julep Karmen for the flames, since the red and gold combo microglitter blended so nicely with the bronze and red sparkles from P51 (in fact, sometimes too nicely, the contrast wasn't always obvious enough for me).  This is one heavy coat of Karmen layered on top. At angles, the emerald sparkle looked awesome with the scarlet flames, though it was of course tricky to photograph. Where to buy:  I got these from  Snail Vinyls , which I thought were pretty affordably priced, and had free shippi

Llarowe's P51 came home to me after a frenzied restock, oh, A YEAR AGO, and then promptly sat untried due to disappointment.  Wait, what?  Well, you see, the even to this day only pics of this beauty are the ones from  a 2013 batch on Pointless Cafe , which were used on the sale page of the website.  When I opened the battled-for box of treasure, I was kinda bummed to see that  P47  and P51 looked to be about the same polish, with P51 just being slightly more purpley.  When swatched, neither looked like those solitary older PC photos, which seemed to have multi-colored blue and red and green shimmer instead of this Fantasy Fire-type red-to-green shifting pigment that I otherwise love to pieces.  Waaaaa. indoor, bright CF light Hot DAMN I'm dumb. P51 is a deep, vampy purple jelly, packed with the aforementioned FF/Clarins 230-type color shifting sparkle.  It's quite a bit darker than this spring-leading-into-summer weather would usually have me reaching for, but hey

Apparently I just can't get enough of Dance Legend's New Prism holos lately, and the boy said my fingers should match my toes today, so here we go with Android. indoor, CF lighting Android is a bright leafy green that leans more than a little blue, especially when the holo comes out to play. outdoor, direct sunlight I'd worn this one before but not yet blogged it, and the second go-round was just as nice as the first.  This collection was all graced with a great formula that wears fairly decently (3 days or so before edgewear shows up). indirect, shady sunlight The color has an almost pearly suggestion  of iridescence in lower lighting, which is probably the incredibly strong linear holo glinting along even without full sunlight. full sunlight Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  Great formula and no fuss.  These don't require aqua base, and topcoating doesn't dull the rainbow. Where to buy:  DL's  list of international stockists . ~Michelle

A quick post while I'm on a super peaceful mountain vacation, here's Ludurana Fascinante, topped with Glitter Gal's Galaxy Holo Topcoat. indoor, bright window-filtered sunlight Fascinante is one of the several versions of an apparently fave duochrome combination (since I  keep buying it , every  time I see it ) that I've previously only used in a comparison post.  Something about the rich, warm wine-to-bronze flash keeps sucking me in. indoor, shady window-filtered light Unlike plenty of duochromes, Fascinante is nicely opaque in just 2 coats, meaning no undies necessary to get this incredible shift.  Like other Ludurana polishes, this one is supposed to be scented, but other than an unusual fruity-floral note to the smell of the wet polish, I didn't particularly notice a scent once it was dry and topcoated. indirect overcast sunlight I've topped it here with Glitter Gal Galaxy Holo Topcoat (which I used instead of regular TC) - this stuff was

The sun's out, the weather's warming up, and clearly it's holo time. indoor, bright CF lighting Spacecraft was one of the dozen or so "New Prism" collection linear holos that put Russian brand Dance Legend firmly on the map for polish junkies.  I've tried 3 of this collection, and all have the same dead-perfect formula:  nearly one-coaters, ideal thickness, good quality brush, and POW FIRE!! direct sunlight From the rainbow arc in the pic above, you can see how finely milled the holo particle is - this isn't a chunky, sparkly rainbow, but a smoothly prismatic flame.  This also means that in lower light, chunks of holo particle don't dusty-out the charcoal base color much at all. indirect, shady sunlight.  even in the shade, you get the hint of oil-slick rainbows. Much like the slightly darker true black  Jade Magia , in bright light Spacecraft flashes a bronze-gold center. Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  Aqua base isn't necessary

Suzy has  worn this one before and loved it , but as with so many things, I've left Pic de Subenuix languishing in the mountain of untried things in my stash for far too long. indoor, bright CF lighitng PdS is a creamy and almost dusty purple that's absolutely packed with aqua shimmer.  The bottle shot above is fairly accurate, in that it almost always had a rich teal flash down the center that often faded out to the purple on the edges.  Kind of like the "lit from within" look that some darker vampy reds and wines have, only with cool tones. outdoor, shady light 2 coats had this nicely opaque, without VNL, and for all that the shimmer is really prominent, it didn't end up brush-stroke-y at all. bright direct sunlight The brighter and more direct the light, the more the purple edges were masked by the flashy shimmer. Rating:  a totally solid 4 out of 5 stars, with a decent formula and wear time. Where to buy:  at either  Elevation Polish&#

Now that the sun has finally come back (begone, long winter of '14-'15!!), it's HOLO time! indoor, bright CF lighting Jade's Irresistivel is a gold linear holo, in their typical petite bottle with lovely brush.  Jade's holos are the jelly finish type that lets the holo sparkle through as brightly as possible, and it's sheer enough that I've used this color as a holo topcoat before.  At 2 coats, though, there's only the suggestion of VNL, which is plenty opaque enough for me. indirect overcast sunlight In the shade, Irresistivel has a foil finish that looks like individual nano-flakes of gold in an almost clear background.  Indoors in office fluorescents, it looks like a softly shimmering, nearly nude shade of champagne gold. Hit the sun, though, and POW!!!!!! bright sunlight. Subtle, this is not.  It's so blinding, i could land airplanes with these signal flares.  Check it out - the holo is so sparklingly clear that you can see

Some glittery polishes I've been wearing lately have been a little more stubborn than others - Art of Witchcraft was challenging both for the richly saturated color (that I knew would stain my cuticles) and the tons of microglitter.  Battle of the heavy-duty removers: COMMENCE! First up: the Nail Aid Power Gel No-rub.  This product took the nail world by storm a couple of months ago, so much so that my nail-oblivious partner felt the need to post a review to my facebook page (I have NO IDEA where he came across this).  It sounded amazing enough that I ran off to dreaded Walmart (being the sole purveyor thereof), and used it within the week.   The Power Gel is exactly what it says: acetone polymerized into a gel thickness.  As a scientist, I'm actually kind of amazed that this stuff is legal, since it's kinda ready-made napalm (both sticky and flammable as hell).  There are theoretically 2 formulas, one for glitter and one for dark polish, but the only differ

Last up for Femme Fatale-a-palooza is my 2nd pick from the current Snow White collection, Art of Witchcraft. indoor, indirect sunlight Witchcraft is a dark teal that's translucent enough to let all the holo microgliters it's packed with sparkle through.  It's not quite a jelly, and it is fully opaque in 2 coats, though it it did wear on me like a jelly (some edgewear by the 2nd day).  It also has a striking flash of wine shimmer that's very apparent in this 2nd bottle shot, though few of my pics could capture anything like it was IRL. indoor, CF lighting The wine shimmer usually flashed as a band down the center of the nail, much like shimmer does that's at the center of a holo arc.  The deep wine blending out to the deep teal gave it a unique smoldering-from-within sort of look. indoor, filtered direct sunlight The shimmer was much more prominent than it shows up in pics, especially in bright light. It's more subtle to stealthy in lower