Sweet Baby Octopolish!

I think everyone can agree that the last few years haven't been the greatest, and there's a meme going around lately that says, "Nobody claim 2023 as ‘your year.’ We’re all going to walk in real slow. Be good. Be quiet. Be cautious and respectful. Don’t touch anything,” and WOW do I feel that.  So extra effort and style, heck yes New Year's Eve is my fave, but maybe not dripping in diamonds and gold holo bling, ya know? indoor, bright CF lighting for both I made fluid nail art decals using Dance Legend Robots Vs Humans, a gloriously linear holo in the old-skool style that benefits from an aqua base.  For the cells, I added DL Spot It White, which is quite dead and no longer forming cells but does have a thin consistency that helps cells form up, and Baroness X Glam, a metallic gold sparkly fluid polish that is working perfectly fine.  Interestingly enough, while the cells formed nicely in this look, somehow the white and brown blended mostly together to form a soft moc...

 As a scientist, I'm unapologetically liberal in my political leanings, and WOW did I breathe a sigh of relief this week!  A celebration of a peaceful transition of political era was most definitely in order. outdoor, cloudy daylight I've started with a trio of polishes with quite different holo finishes.  My index nail is Dance Legend Triumph, a navy with larger silver holo flake.  My middle finger is Shleee Ghostly Snapshot, a lovely iridescent white with a light scattering of very fine holo dust.  The red nails are Emily de Molly Understatement, a jelly packed full of holo glitters. indoor, bright CF lighting Over my variously sparkly red, white, and blue base, I've layered Justice Ginsberg's dissent collars in silver holo, and the feminist power symbol in blue holo, all in celebration of our first black woman elected to the Vice Presidency.  Images are from a custom Lantern & Wren plate memorializing "The Notorious RBG," which stamped great. indoor,...

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...

A swatch photo in the Vapid fan group reminded me that Witching Hour is awfully pretty in a deep, dark, vampy way... and a cool effects topcoat from Dance Legend was just languishing untried, so... indoor, bright CF lighting Yes!  Slytherin nails!   First layers first: indoor, bright CF lighting Witching Hour is a deep inky off-black base with very fine-milled purple shimmer.  The bottle catches more shimmer for me than my nails do, and this is indeed one of those polishes that looks black in moderate light on down, but that was wholly expected from the get go.  It's completely opaque in 2 coats, but cleanup can be dicey if this ink gets at your cuticle egde. indoor, bright CF lighting The morning after I'd painted this, I wanted my vampy look to have more flash than just a creature of the night, and since the base layer was totally dry, it seemed a great time to try out one of Dance Legend's magnetic top coats. outdoor, bright d...

I was really feeling like a green this week, and after I'd picked this gorgeous emerald shade for my toes when I recently headed out for a pedi, being matchy-matchy for a couple of days was definitely in order. indoor, bright CF lighting Famously flawless Russian Blogger Anna Gorelova has partnered with Russian staple Dance Legend  for several years now, releasing new collections a couple of times yearly.  This one was number 02 from her 2014 HallOWLeen collection.  Depending on the translation from Russian, this one is either called Kikimora ( a Russian house-spirit/female bogeyman legend ) or Fright. outdoor, overcast daylight Kikimora looks very blue-leaning in the bottle, but on the nail is a lovely emerald green packed with "ocean" type flakies that shift from blue to aqua to green.  There's also a liberal sprinkling of shimmer that flashes in certain lighting conditions but is often swamped by the flakies, especially in lower light.  This shimm...

It's been a while since I played with my fluid art polishes, and I needed something a bit more neutral looking after my last blingy look, so I made some decals and ended up with this: outdoor, bright direct sunlight To create the decals, I used a layer of a chocolate brown shimmer, added plenty of LA Girl Live on Stage  for the bright gold holo sparks, and plenty of dabs of Dance Legend Spot it White to create the foamy cells.  Polish was applied to my silicone nail art mat, and the mat was folded and pressed until I was happy with the patterns that resulted. outdoor, shady daylight The white swirled the other two colors together quite nicely, but really only a few areas of the expected foamy cells ultimately developed.  A fluid nail art pro in one of my fb polish groups recently mentioned that her fluid polishes eventually become less effective (NOOOO!!!!!), so this one may be pooping out  :( indoor, bright CF lighting I really liked this look and ...

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 ...

After all the flaming red loveliness that I was last wearing, I decided that a neutral palate cleanser was in order.  I wore Dance Legend's Robots vs Humans once when it first came out, but never blogged it, so this seemed like a good time to revisit this one. indoor, bright CF lighting Dance Legend made a huge splash in nail polish world with their 2013 New Prism collection - these were some of the first more widely available holos, and they were really the first to go on creamy smooth without the need to paint on bare nail or a special aqua basecoat. Robots vs Humans is a warm copper-brown that goes on nearly opaquely in just one coat, and is completely solid in one and a half to two.  It's pigmented enough to use for stamping, and I swooned over that amazing holo flare in the bottle there. indoor, bright CF lighting Sadly, though, wearing it again reminded me of all the issues I had with this color the first time around - though my painting technique and base/to...

I finally broke out of my blue streak this week by gazing longingly at a whole double handful of red polishes with contrasting lime green shimmer that are being released by multiple brands, each one different from the next.  In my efforts to stop the madness and be content with the 80 bajillion polishes already in residence here, I grabbed a red I hadn't properly photographed the first time I wore it, and a topper for that contrasty sparkle. indoor, bright CF lighting My base color here is Dance Legend's Anna Gorelova collaboration The Soothsayer.  It's a gorgeous red that's bright cherry when warm and deepest darkest dried blood when cold.  It's from a 2014 collection, and still transitions just as quickly as when I first tried it almost exactly 3 years ago, further proof that some thermals are far sturdier than the promised 6 months. window-filtered daylight Baroness X is one of the reigning queens of gorgeous things made with Clarins 230/UP shifty sh...

I found myself painting my nails on a weekend day with no other pressing to-do items, so had more time than my usual paint right before bed sort of thing.  The extra time meant I could go right ahead and pull out a neglected magnetic polish. indoor, CF lighting Thunderball is from Dance Legend's collection of magnetics with James Bond-themed names.  This one is a rich navy blue with a sorta chunky heavy gold shimmer that gets pulled into the magnet's stripe. outdoor, bright sunlight Immediately after painting, I had some nice, crisp diagonal stripes evident... but about 3 hours later, they'd tragically melted back into the polish, despite my magnetizing both the 2nd coat and the topcoat for at least 30 seconds each, using a quite strong neodymium magnet.  In very bright light, the stripes remained pretty clear on my nails, but in lower or overcast lighting, they vanished. indoor, window-filtered overcast daylight Now, I consider myself a confident m...

Last year, Dance Legend released a handful of colors in their Spot It line that were supposed to cause cool foamy bubbles when used as a topcoat over wet polish.  Genius Russian bloggers were able to get spectacular results with this stuff ( seriously, watch the video because she makes it look suuuuper easy ), but my one attempt on a swatch stick was a total fail.  Flash forward to this year, when Sinful colors released their own version, and BOOM fluid nail art has really taken off. outdoor, bright sunlight I made a swatch stick with Dance Legend Spot It White when I first got it, painting directly over a wet black base using a technique like what was in that Russian video.  It ended up as a streaky white wash over the black base - no foamy look, no bubbles, dud.  After the Sinful polishes blew this trend up, folks came up with several ways to get the "cells" to form in wet polish, so I revisited DL Spot It White, and got the super cool results you see above. ...