Sweet Baby Octopolish!

I was going out this Friday with the work crew, and ended up doing stamping designs for everyone... so my stamping game had to be done and sharp before getting to the party! indoor, bright CF lighting Hard Candy exploded on the scene back in the day when a celebrity wore Sky, a creamy sky blue, on late-night tv.  When they released their anniversary collection of back-in-the-day faves a few years ago, this therefore had to be one of my picks.  outdoor, direct sunlight Despite the pale pastel, only 2 coats are necessary for utter opacity.  The first coat goes on a little thicker than ideal, with visibly obvious streakiness.  The second coat perfectly levels everything out, though, and the end result is an overall "plumper" look than I usually go for on my nails, but with ultimately flawless coverage. indoor, CF lighting Within Sky's crème formula hides a bright, finely milled, electric blue shimmer that shows nicely on the sides of the bottle (above)...

As per usual when I need ideas on a starting point for my nails, I asked the man his opinion.  While he most typically gives me just a color, for some strange reason, he was unusually specific:  white and opalescent with lots of flakies.  *Shrug.*  Ok, here goes. indoor, bright CF lighting The result reminds me of shimmery, spangled disco jumpsuits & flashing lights, so I'm calling this a disco nail art look.  It's fun, but not something I would have come up with on my own, so I just popped my hip and flung the opposite pointer in the air and went with it. window-filtered sunlight I started out with a base of Hard Candy Coconut in hopes that its shimmer might peek through the flake base (lol, nope, it's still just plain white on the nail).  Since clearly more shimmer was needed, I then topped with Baroness X Fox Fires, an iridescent microflakie topcoat, which absolutely amped up the shimmer quotient.  Next, I used some french tip guide...

Once upon a time, I sent my partner off on a walmart quest to find some of the Hard Candy anniversary polishes, and while the picked-over selection made for only partial success, he grabbed a handful of these slender test tubes in colors he liked.  I always have a soft spot in my heart for these now. indoor, bright CF lighting Cosmic Love Affair is a deeply saturated sapphire blue glassfleck in a navy blue base.  The shimmers shift over to purple at angles, with nothing in between and nothing beyond - a true duo- and not multichrome. indoor, bright CF lighting at a long angle to the bottle While the macro pics make this look like a glitter, nope, these shimmer particles didn't give me any grief during removal, and the formula was utter perfection - a one coat wonder, as long as you paint carefully to avoid the drama of a mess cleanup on a blue this dark is going to be. indirect daylight To compliment the blue-to-purple midnight, I've stamped using El Corazon H...

I've been mesmerized by a whole bunch of Russian blogger IG videos where drops of contrasting paint swirled into a base color on the nail make amazing marble patterns effortlessly, and because they make it look so easy I figured I could give it a go. indoor, CF lighting While the macro shots highlight a few inconsistencies, at normal viewing length I was super pleased with these, and got tons of compliments. indoor, bright CF lighting Sky is a Walmart exclusive, part of the anniversary re-release polishes that launched there last year. The pretty electric blue shimmer visible in the bottle above is extremely subtle on the nail (even in macro pics this is a creme finish and not a shimmer).   The last time I tried out  one of these HC subtle shimmers, it had a hot mess of a formula.  Conveniently, thinner polishes with a slower dry time are apparently ideal for this kind of drag marbling on the nail technique, so this seemed like a good idea. outdoor, shady/o...

Who doesn't love a great blue polish?  There's a reason that Revlon Royal, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, and Nails Inc Baker Street are all perennial faves, despite a lack of holo/glitter/shimmer/everything else that makes a nail polish junkie click "add to cart"... and I'm fascinated by how many of the best blues are drugstore finds. indoor, CF lighting Once upon a time, I sent my partner off to dreaded walmart to find one or two of the Hard Candy anniversary polishes (his office is literally next door to the den of iniquity), and he came home with a whole handful of these little test tubes beyond what I'd been hunting.  Blue Lagoon is a drop-dead gorgeous deeply saturated cobalt blue crelly that gets to an amazingly even opacity in just 2 coats.  Because some blues have a distinct whiff of sulphur, it's worth mentioning that this one really didn't. window-filtered daylight That perfect blue is of course a perfect base for some nail art.  I...

Continuing my musical nails for the week, I went in a totally different direction; since the opposite of goth is cute... indoor, bright CF lighting I've picked up a few of the Hard Candy anniversary re-releases now.  Though I was certainly into polish in my college days, apparently I wasn't hardcore yet because I never would have considered dropping $15 or 20 on a bottle of anything at that time.  The $4 releases at wally world, though, hey, i'll give that a whirl. indoor, window-filtered daylight Coconut is exactly as creamy a white as that name would suggest.  The formula is, to be blunt, crappy: it goes on with a subtly granular appearance in the first coat that had me worried it was going to end up legit lumpy.  3 coats were needed to get this to opacity, and with topcoat, POOF, things were for the most part magically evened out. indoor, CF lighting Coconut has a hot magenta-pink shimmer that's readily apparent in the bottle, yet 100% invisibl...