Sweet Baby Octopolish!

The man picked "dark blue" when prompted for a color suggestion, but instead of reaching for one of my newest sparkles, I went for something a little deeper into Mount Untried. indoor, bright CF lighting Triumph is a lovely dusty denim/slate blue filled with silver holo flake.  I feel the grey undertone in this blue would make it really wearable for most skin tones, and the moody stormcloud color is just about perfect for the non-stop rainy weather that's flooded the east coast for the past few months. indoor, bright CF lighting I have several other polishes in similar finishes - opaque color with holo flake - and found Triumph to be surprisingly sheer and borderline watery.  The base is very much a jelly, and while it's thick enough that the flakes lie flat and smooth in it, 3 coats were absolutely necessary to get it to the bottle color.  For a color this saturated at the final look, I found 3 coats to be highly unusual. outdoor, overcast daylight

Weeelllll, my winter holiday themed month came to a crashing halt when I was so swoonily in love with this polish that I felt zero urge to stamp over it. indoor, bright CF lighting You'll notice some minor edge wear in a few of these pics - that's because I wore the utterly amazing Another Glorious Morning for a week straight. Quixotic Polish released this beauty as part of Polish Pickup's horror movies theme from September, and while I'll debate whether Hocus Pocus is horrific, there's no debate that this is one of my absolute fave magnetics. bright mid-day sunlight Another Glorious Morning starts off with a deep hunter green base that ends up typically looking eggplant purple due to the load of shimmer packed in.  On top of this, it has the type of high-sheen multichromatic magnetic shimmer that gives a 3D cat's eye effect with even medium intensity lighting.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, with my super strong ring magnet held at a diagonal o

Do you ever have a polish just pop into your mind?  I knew several days ago that my next mani would be in black, and that it would specifically be L'Oréal The Queen's Ambition, so this design was built around that gotta-do-it-now thought. indoor, bright CF lighting The Queen's Ambition was part of a fantasy-themed group L'Oréal put out in 2012;  this is my only polish from that line.  This Queen is just barely off-black, and was very subtly dusty looking at the first coat, but deepened just a little with the 2nd coat.  It's also quite thick, and the only reason it took me 2 coats is that I do my first layer as thin as possible.  Embedded within this inky darkness is a whole boatload of silver microglitters that means it dries somewhat textured... and then it's SUPER topcoat thirsty.  2 layers wasn't adequate to smooth things out. indoor, bright CF lighting Continuing with my winter holiday themed December, I had this black & silver background

After a way too rainy autumn, the sun finally started peeking out, so round 2 of "all winter holiday all December" needed a cheerfully blinding holo. indoor, CF lighting Treehouse is a flamingly linear holo in a shade somewhere between mossy green and old-gold bronze - I have it filed as green, because it most definitely looks green in the bottle, but in fact most of the time on the nail it wore more as bronze.  Either way, it's a flashy antique earth tone with an utterly perfect formula that threw rainbows at every opportunity.  I haven't bought a "plain" holo in quite some time - apparently, I prefer my holos to be multichromes or have flakies or something else... but this color is utterly unique in my stash and well worth grabbing. outdoor, overcast daylight Over this earthy bronze, I've stamped a wintertime forest with a touch of snow using BM-407.  There's one large dot of snow plus a few smaller ones at the top of the image, and I r

Last year I had a lot of fun with "all Halloween all October"and then had no time for even a single stamped/nail art design this year.  Instead, I'm going for "all holiday/winter all December" to see if I can knock myself fully back into the nail game. outdoor, indirect daylight Well, I think I rocked it right out of the box.  This is 2 coats of Pahlish Mad Man With a Box, which is still a little thicker than I'd like but didn't chip on me at all like back when I first wore it.  I've layered first a more complex fabric-textured plaid from HeHe 028 in white, and then a thin subtle box plaid in light blue with CJS 06, and finally used a matte topcoat to make this look like soft flannel. outdoor, bright sunlight I love how in bright light the flakies from Mad Man are able to glimmer through the stamping pattern, while still staying understated as though they are slubs in fabric.  Gotta love it when a design actually behaves the way you want

I've been on a major thermal kick recently, so when this lovely showed up recently it jumped right on my nails. indoor, bright CF lighting Yeah.  Wow. Heather has apparently come into a stash of everybody's fave red-to-green Clarins 230 type shifty shimmer, and dumped a generous helping of it right into this jaw-dropping tri-thermal polish.  Ethereal is a deep eggplant purple when cold, a bright cornflower blue in the middle, and a cool-toned nude when warm.  I got everything from funky french tips to gradual color shadings across my whole nail when wearing this, and it's one of those tonal thermals that just looks lovely at all colors. outdoor, overcast daylight Ethereal is a delightfully sensitive thermal, quick to change color with minimal changes in my surrounding temp.  It's shifty enough that cold/warm water assistance was utterly unnecessary to get these pics in all the transitioning states.  Fun fact:  your hand is supplied by 2 different art