Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 As is the case with so many people, with the world in this state I'm really not feeling festive this holiday season, and haven't been inspired to do a lot of seasonal looks.  Then I saw another polisher showing off a look with Bluebird Lacquer Centaur of Attention, and BAM ready to go! indoor, bright CF lighting Bluebird Lacquer released Centaur of Attention several years ago for PPU, and reds not being my usual jam, I passed.  I skipped it again when it was up for PPU rewind month the next year.  This year, after so many devastating swatches and with the declaration this was the last run for the color, I caved, and YES. outdoor, overcast/shady daylight This is the 3.0 version of Centaur of Attention, and per some comparisons on facebook, each version got progressively just a step darker, richer, and more holo than the one before - seeing all 3 versions side by side made me beyond glad I'd passed until this round.  It's a true neutral red, neither leaning warm/brick no

Glow in the dark polishes are one of my absolute fave "special effects" - they never fade out or die with age, and they amuse the heck out of my inner 3 year old when I go to bed at night with spectral light waving around on my fingertips.   indoor, CF lighting I grabbed Lucky 13's recent PPU offering Can I Keep You? because the sparkly effect is so much like the picturesque movie version of new-fallen snow, and I had plans to turn this into a winter scene... but then decided that might be too much of a repeat of last week's mountains & pine trees, and ended up liking the shifty glass fleck look on its own. outdoor, afternoon sunlight Can I Keep You is a sheer, lightly greyed-out base that I think dries down a touch darker than what's in the bottle.  It's most definitely not stark white-out white, but a far more wearable neutral.  A light dusting of scattered holo adds to that holiday-card snowfall look (and would probably be amazing as sand on a beach man

Last week, someone in one of my nail art FB groups posted a gorgeous mani with stylized layered pine trees in bright jeweltone crèmes, which reminded me: hey, I have a ton of nature-themed stamping plates that include different pine trees... indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish releases new stuff each Friday, and more often than not includes a weekly mystery.  These are truly unknowns - no hints at all as to color or finish - and though I tend to avoid such things, her creations are so unique it's hard to pass one of these by if there's already treats in my shopping cart.  This one, Softy, is an indeed soft lavender with pearly lilac shimmer and a light scattering of very fine holo dust.  I'm showing 2 coats here, but might go with a 3rd if I was going to wear it solo.  outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight I loved the twilight-sky glow of Softy so much that I abandoned plans for candy-colored trees and kept the rest natural.  My ring finger is part of a mountain range ima

 This week, 2 things happened that in combo can't be denied: the weather turned cool, and my nails were longer than I usually wear them, so a thermal polish was clearly necessary. indoor, bright CF lighting Deminator - named for the creator of Baroness X herself - is a pink (warm) to purple (cold) thermal that also has a healthy smattering of iridescent flakies and a hefty dose of Clarins 230 red-to-green pigment. outdoor, overcast daylight I have at least one other pink-to-purple thermal, which is probably why this one was untried for a while.  That other one feels candy-colored, a bit more girly than I typically go for, so this one was on hold while I thought it was super close.  Not so!  Deminator's base appears to be ever so slightly dusty, just a touch greyed out, so instead of bubblegum-to-grape, this looks on me like mauve-to-eggplant.  Just a touch more adult and a lot more wearable on my skintone.   outdoor, bright sunlight As with other thermal + 230 polishes I've

 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 through (any more opaque and you'd lose

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 Clarins 23

 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 finely milled au

 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