Sweet Baby Octopolish!

While the sun is still shining and holos are calling my name, time to break out another Emily de Molly! indoor, bright CF lighting Once upon a time when I first bought Emily de Molly Flatline, I was floored at how amazingly blinding the linear holo effect was in the bottle - same was true when I finally got around to wearing it recently .  Well, when she released a whole collection of these super holos a year later, this one jumped right in my basket. window-filtered bright sunlight The gorgeous dark lavender (I don't know how it's possible to be both a darkly saturated AND a pastel color simultaneously, but here we are) is intensely holographic, possibly even more so than Flatline.  In the below pic, I was shocked to notice this beauty kicking off rainbows even in my dimly lit office (I had the lights turned off here to save energy and cut the rising temps in this summertime 90-something swelter). very indirect window-filtered daylight.  still stunning. Dark

Now that we're at the first of the summer, and the sun finally came out for more than a brief peek, I was feeling some bright summertime color explosion.  But not neon, because that just isn't my jam. outdoor, bright sunlight Enchanted Polish March 2014 is as close to neon as I usually wear, a cheerfully bright chartreuse green holo.  I'm wearing two coats here, after which I applied decals stamped in black and filled in with Emily de Molly & Esmaltes da Kelly crèmes.  Images are from KADS Flower 015, a stamping plate that was an instant must-buy the moment I saw it. KADS is a budget plate maker that's usually shipped from China.  I've seen them offered on Ali Express, but I always prefer to buy Chinese goods from ebay - seller communication and shipping times end up much better for me.  KADS Flower 015 is an utterly gorgeous set of 9 images that are an insect or butterfly on the left half, metamorphosing to sprays of flowers on the right.  Each

Femme Fatale makes a number of polishes with slightly or significantly more chunky holo glitters, and with the recent bout of all sun all the time, I was definitely feeling some holo.  The fact that I was feeling like also dealing with glitter, though, is quite unusual and not to be passed up (far too many pretty bottles of glitter sit unloved around here because I don't want to hassle with the removal).  Perusing my stash, I discovered an untried sample and a glitterbomb, both with equally nautical names, so surely meant to be together. indoor, CF lighting Sound of the Sea, as the bottle says right there, was a part of a sample sale from July 2016.  Femme Fatale releases batches of samples periodically, not on any particular schedule, and each of the bottles is a completely unique one of a kind study that may or may not have been developed further to make it into a regular collection.  This one "feels" to me like it'd fit in with the color palette of the Birth

As is often the case when I need a starting point to select a polish, I check in with my partner, who helpfully suggests a base color.  As he's done more often lately, though, he got awfully specific this time:  "blue with green flakies." indoor, bright CF lighting Illyrian Alfheim is a lovely cool cerulean blue - somewhere between sky and cobalt, but closer to the latter.  It's a quite sheer jelly to allow the iridescent "ocean" type flakies - the sort from the old Nfu-oh polishes that shift from green to aqua to blue - to shine through. window-filtered overcast daylight I'm wearing 3 coats here.  The base color was a touch uneven until 3rd coat, but the sea of flakies distributed very evenly on each coat and actually looked best at the 2nd.  The 3rd coat meant the flakies started to layer over top of each other, and look more like a full wall of shimmer rather than individual separate pigment elements. window-filtered afternoon sunlight

As with my usual urge to yo-yo to something really different than what I wore before, after the bright and sunny pastel of my last mani, it was time for deep and dark. indoor, CF lighting I have a huge love of shifty polishes, that's no surprise at all.  And while I'm at it, anything shifting to green anywhere along the spectrum is a fave.  This right here hits all my buttons, and, well, just look at that shift! outdoor, overcast/shady daylight Femme Fatale released Death March as an "oops" a year and change ago, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to be, quite possibly because these boo-boo batches keep getting extra goodies added to them until they are saleably beautiful.  It's a deeply vampy eggplant purple jelly base, loaded with aurora shimmer that shifts from red to green, then dusted with small round holo glitters. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight In direct light, Death March is a wine- or fuchsia-tinged purp

Pahlish has been releasing a handful of gorgeous muted colors with crushed gold flake lately, and I jumped right into her most recent restock a couple of weeks ago to grab some must-haves. indoor, bright CF lighting Fiji is a lovely aqua crelly filled with plenty of the aforementioned crushed gold flake.  I think it leans ever so slightly more blue than green, but definitely look at bunches of swatch photos if you like aquas that are more one than the other - this does appear different based lighting conditions, and I'm very sure skin tone will play into how this looks on you a whole lot. indoor, bright CF lighting I had smooth, even coverage at 2 coats, and it would have been fine to stop there.  The color appeared very slightly more muted and greyed at 2 coats, likely due to the not 100% opaque crelly formula letting my nail bed show through just a touch.  Since the sun came back out the day I painted, I went for a 3rd coat, which brightened and saturated the color bu

After a few days of cheerfully bright sunshine and increasing temperatures, I was most certainly feeling the need for a bright linear holo. indoor, CF lighting Emily de Molly Flatline is hands-down one of the most blindingly linear holos I own.  Even in fluorescent office lighting, there's still a hint of a flame arc on the nail surface, so while the color is a soft, muted lavender/lilac that would otherwise be quite office appropriate, it's still pretty flashy as hell, especially in the sunlight. indoor, bright CF lighting The color is one of those I could never quite nail down as far as which precise shade of pale purple it really is.  I have it filed as a more pink-tinged lilac, but on the nail in some lighting it appeared more blue-leaning lavender.  Since I liked the play between the two colors, I stamped with saturated pastels in each shade, Esmaltes da Kelly Maria and Wendy, using alternating zig-zag stripes from BM-423. bright afternoon sunlight Flat

The Smithsonian Museum is currently running a 90s film festival, and while my work & life schedules didn't allow me to go check out all of the ones I was interested in seeing on the big screen again, me and a few friends were able to hit up one of my all time super faves, The Fifth Element. indoor, CF lighting I needed the perfect Diva Plavalaguna shade of blue, which I found in my stash as Baroness X Mermaid Silk.  This lovely blue somewhere between cornflower and royal has a dusting of holo and a pretty aqua contrasting shimmer.  Nicely opaque in 2 coats, it was just what I needed to start this look. indoor, bright CF lighting I picked up NerdNails plate 20, all of which is images and phrases from The Fifth Element, quite a while ago and like so many things it's sat around unused for far too long.  Well, if there was ever a time to try it out, this was obviously it. indoor, bright CF lighting I stamped the 4 element symbols engraved on the stones using C