Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 With a stamped design planned out, I needed the right base color, and remembered to snap a few photos of this new-to-me polish before layering it under the stamping... indoor, CF lighting for all photos Glisten & Glow is my fave topcoat, hands-down, long-term, but I have a scant few of their polish offerings.  Monster Mash was released with last year's Halloween-themed PPU, and is a deep smoked-amethyst purple loaded with subtly shifting gold microflake shimmer. Monster Mash was nearly opaque on the first coat, and I'm showing two as per usual.  I loved the way this looks - all the shimmer and mystery of OPI First Class Desires or a England Incense Burner , but definitively purple and not near-black.  Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  Frankly, I was only looking for just the right purple for my planned mani, then unexpectedly fell absolutely in love.  This color is vampy without being outright goth, very flattering on my skintone, and had a lovely formula.  It did show some not

One good fall leaf deserves another, and this time I went a touch darker in the same red-bronze-gold color palette.   indoor, bright CF lighting About 5 years ago, Parrot Polish released a multichrome collection that was themed around lady pirates.  Always a sucker for a beautiful shifter and not having anything like this one, I picked up Lady Elizabeth Killigrew from the set. outdoor, shady daylight LEK appears to be the same color shift as my beloved Mysterious Mars stamping polish that I used in my last look - in direct light, it's a warm brick- or brown-leaning red, which shifts to coppery bronze and gold at angles, and green at the farthest end of the shift.   indoor, bright CF lighting This is a truly old-skool type duochrome polish, where the shifty shimmer itself is wholly responsible for the color, and the base is a barely-there sheer grey.  This means it takes 3 coats to get to full opacity, but thankfully each coat goes on smooth and even.   outdoor, afternoon daylight K

We've had a few frosty nights and the leaves have most definitely been turning, so I was feeling the idea of seasonally themed nails lately. indoor, CF lighting for both I've started with a base of Dollish Polish Penny Penny Penny, which I've only  just realized that I've never shown by itself, whoops!  PPP is a soft warm-leaning off-white crelly full of metallic copper glitters in a couple different sizes, which already looks a little like autumn leaves falling all across the nail.  I've then used El Corazon Mysterious Mars (possibly my all-time fave stamping polish) and some leaf images & a cute "hello fall" from the Marianne Pro 25 Stamping plate. Hope your autumn season is a colorful one! ~Michelle 

 It seems I'm yo-yo-ing between dark and sparkly lately... so why not both at once? indoor, bright CF lighting Danglefoot Polish is a new-to-me brand based out of the UK, with this sparkly/vampy treat the first of theirs I've tried.  Mohawks, Fishnets and Eyeliner (hereafter MFE, of course) was released with the May 2019 80s-themed PPU. window-filtered bright daylight MFE starts with a deep black base with excellent opacity - I'm showing 2 coats here, with a ring magnet applied to the 2nd coat and the topcoat.   outdoor, bright daylight There's a super shifty multichromatic shimmer in here that grabs and reflects every photon of light nearby, plus a light scattering of silver holo flake that adds a flashy glimmer in bright light, but is only visible as flake in lower light. indoor, bright CF lighting When in low light (below), or when the light isn't directly aiming at the polish (my index finger in the bottle shot above), the shimmer fades out to a subtle overlay,

 I reached for a metallic color this week, and after looking through the bins of silver and gold, spotted just what I wanted in the copper section. indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish continues to be one of the absolute queens of shimmery goodness.   outdoor, afternoon daylight Forgotten Things starts with a super sheer, barely smoke-tinted base.  It took 3 thin coats to build up to opacity, so it would very easily serve as a topper - this would look smashing over any shade of grey all the way through to black, or a very dark red. indoor, bright CF lighting In direct light, Forgotten Things is a beautiful, rich copper.  It quickly shifts over to bronze at a slight angle - easily evident across just the curve of my nails - and hits a bright peridot green at longer angles.  Scattered across that is a really nice holo flake, whose silver vanishes into the metallic base in low light, then leaps into bright rainbows in bright light (below). outdoor, afternoon daylight There's some

Halloween is over, but I'm apparently not done with being vampy & mysterious...  indoor, CF lighting This mani started with 2 layers of Jessica Street Swagger, a deep, every so slightly brick-leaning, truly dried-blood red crelly.  The last time I wore this , I got away with a single coat, but this time around I painted much thinner layers and needed more like one-and-a-half.  It's still got a dead perfect formula that dries to a very nice shine on its own - it's polishes like this that teach me why there are folks that choose to wear unadorned crèmes and crellies on the regular.   outdoor, afternoon daylight Punching up my plain red, I've added a single heavy layer of Ethereal The Dark Mark, a very dense aurora shimmer topper in a barely grey base.  The end result is a sexy blackened scarlet with subtle shine and shimmer indoors, that explodes into color-shifting fire when I stepped out into the sun.   outdoor, bright afternoon daylight Because oh yes indeedy, the

 One last fun Halloween look for this year! outdoors, overcast daylight Once upon a group buy, I snagged this truly ginormous stamping plate of no particular brand, labeled only as XXL-03, featuring a huge sugar skull in the center (big as your whole hand) surrounded by every possible iteration of skulls, bats, and assorted Halloween goodness.  It was well worth whatever I paid for it, and I bust it out at least once per spooky season.  For this round, I've used a fairly realistic-shaped skull pattern (bonus!  The plate came with a tinier skull to fit my pinky nails!) in various crème colors to match a super loudly colorful skull shirt I recently discovered on Amazon. It was a hit combo at work and for passing out candy to the kiddos trick-or-treating. Hope your season was fun, ~Michelle