Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 We've had a lot of overcast dreary weather here, and while that's blah and not at all helping with my wishes for springtime, it is ideal to show off the shift of a good multichrome. indoor, CF lighting Great Lakes Lacquer released The Scorpion, the Serpent, the Phoenix with last January's "written in the stars" PPU as a tribute to the maker's own sign of Scorpio.  Now, I'm convinced I have a version of every multichrome under the sun, but when I saw the swatch pics it looked very unique, and I still don't know exactly what's going on here. indoor, bright CF lighting This polish is quite shifty and changes a lot with a tilt of your hand or while walking through different rooms in the house (you know, where the window goes from this angle to that one, and the lights are lamps instead of overhead).  In some lighting, this polish is intensely emerald green (above) while in other's it's a soft, cool, silvery grey (pinky nail in the top pic) - t...

I keep finding nail inspiration in lots of unusual places lately.  My super weird work schedule means that I'm in quasi-isolation most of the time, just like everyone else, so I welcome all the help from non-standard sources!  I was recently perusing another blogger's destash and found this beauty, and finally remembered oh wait, I already have that!! indoor, CF lighting Great Lakes Lacquer released Creatures of Night Brought to Light! with last year's August PPU, and it's themed around one of my all-time fave movies, The Last Unicorn. outdoor, bright sunlight This polish is a real chameleon.  The base is an inky dark cool-toned violet, but the duochromatic shimmer is a warm plum wine.  Indoors, most of the time it looked like a smoky amethyst with a brighter central flash. indoor, bright CF lighting With brighter light and any angles, though, the shimmer blazes into metallic copper, and then almost to green.  outdoor, bright sunlight I'm...

Pulling Asylum out of my stash this past week reminded me that I'd originally bought it just a couple of months after Tonic polish released their amazing Dryad's Grove in a collab box.  I wanted the Tonic very much, but had no interest in the rest of the polishes, and unfortunately that was the case for a whole lot of people - prices quickly soared on the secondhand market.  Another month or so later, and Great Lakes Lacquer released O'Rlyeh?, another gorgeous green in the same vein.  I also managed to snap up a bottle of Enchanted's Holiday LE from 2014 from a destash.  And then last year, Tonic sent another few dozen bottles of Dryad's Grove out into the world as part of a mystery bag sale. indoor, CF lighting All swatches go in order of the bottle shots here: Index: Glitter Daze Asylum Middle:  Tonic Dryad's Grove Ring:  Great Lakes Lacquer O'Rlyeh? Pinky:  Enchanted Polish Holiday 2014 So right up front:  none of these are 100% ...

Continuing my series of comparison posts to the ever-elusive Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier:  Part 1 is here , Part 2 is here , Part 3 is here , and now we're settling in for Part 4 - the end (for now). Polish collectors place a premium on "OG UP," that is, the original red-to-green shifting pigment by which Clarins 230 launched a thousand ships.  Treasure seekers comb the back stock rooms of auto paint & body shops to find half empty forgotten containers of this magic, makers hoard their last precious grams of the stuff like dragons on gold, and apocryphal tales about the source of the magic (the inventor of this pigment is said to have perished in the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, losing the formula to us forever) to why it's so hard to come by (it's apparently used in printing the hologram images for counterfeit protection on EU currency).  Since it's gotten so rare, plenty of other makers reach for the more readily available "aurora" pigments - ...

After a big themed shenanigan in mismatching colors on each hand, I decided my next look needed to be a little more clean and simple. indoor, CF lighting Great Lakes Lacquer released Brooklyn Shenanigans as a 2017 PolishCon exclusive, and the swatch photos were right up my alley, but once it arrived I filed it with the other wine colors and kind of forgot about it.  This was very foolish on my part. outdoor, direct sunlight Brooklyn Shenanigans is a subtle duochrome that really knocked my socks off.  There's a deep plummy purple base with a holo somewhere between tightly scattered and loosely linear, and then a contrasting shifty shimmer that goes from pink to gold. outdoor, direct sunlight When that shimmer tilts gold, as above, the whole look is a warm red with molten bronze overlying.  When instead things tilt pink, as below, you get a more cool magenta shade. bright afternoon daylight  It's not at all a dramatic duochrome with a rainbow of...

The recent Chicago Polish-Con was a big deal to the indie polish world, and though I couldn't go, several makers offered their exclusives after the event - sweet!  Not very long after Great Lakes Lacquer sent me Leaves in the Lake it was time to take it for a test drive. indoor, bright CF lighting Leaves is a rich navy blue jelly absolutely crammed full of gorgeously shifty ultrachrome flakes, with the final effect looking exactly how it's named.  The first coat went on smoothly enough that if you wanted to try it as a topper over other blues, it should work fine. indoor, window-filtered daylight I've paired Leaves here with Hits Boca Seca from the "Gio Antonelli Senescoes" collection.  Not at all sure how this rich mahogany copper equates to a dry mouth (the name's translation), but damn, Hits made some nice polishes and I wish there was still a stockist that carried them. indoor, window-filtered daylight Boca Seca is nearly a one-coater, wi...