Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 I already knew right away what I'd be wearing for St Paddy's Day this year: outdoor, bright direct sunlight Oh YESSSSS.  Let's do that again, shall we? indoor, window-filtered indirect daylight I am an inveterate green lover, so when Lucky 13 dropped Holy Mother-Forking Shirtballs with this past December's PPU, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd need to snap it up tout suite. indoor, bright CF lighting Tonal thermals are typically my favorite - if things switch between two shades of the same color, there's no chance of weird intermediates and it's always pretty - but this one kicks that up a notch by being a tri-thermal.  At it's coldest, Shirtballs is a richly saturated kelly green (as in the bottle above, and on the very tips of my middle and ring fingers).  A little warmer and it leans teal, a grassy oceanic green (the rest of my middle and ring fingers).  Warmest, it's a pale, barely-there mint. outdoor, bright sunlight Added to that lovely m...

 There's a super helpful comparisons group on fb that has on more than one occasion reminded me that something previously purchased is going to waste while sitting on Mount Untried... indoor, CF lighting Lucky 13's punnily named Kind of a Big Teal'c was from the space-themed PPU of exactly one year ago, and is quite obviously designed for me.  Flakie, somewhere between emerald and oceanic aqua, all yes. outdoor, late afternoon sunlight After days of wearing this polish, I still can't 100% settle on what the base color is.  "Teal" is probably the best descriptor, but the iridescent ocean-type flakies in there that shift from bright blue to aqua to purple make the overall look lean anywhere from turquoise to emerald in different lighting.  outdoor, shady/overcast daylight Some lighter aqua shades, especially those with warmer-toned pink or reddish shimmer, are particularly bad at the dreaded lobster hands.  Teal'c is saturated and dark enough, though, that t...

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...

Today, I have yet another untried that languished far too long in my stash, Lucky 13's Hardships Unnumbered, from their Labyrinth collection. indoor, bright CF lighting Hardships is a mossy green jelly packed with green and gold shimmer - the overall effect is a warm, slightly murky green with a lovely shine and sparkle.  This took 4 coats to get to the opacity you see here, but the formula was easy to work with and dried quickly so that this wasn't a big deal.  This did that thing some jellies do with the clearing at the free edge, so note that none of this is tip wear, just how this polish looked. Lucky 13's bottles are adorable, with the name and logo on the top of the cap, making them easy to find in your polish storage unit.  The large round cap (like Cult Nails' design) is a little chunky and not as precise-feeling as smaller wands, but the brush is nice, so it's a tossup. indirect daylight The dreary late winter weather didn't cooperate, ...

Part 2 of the Lucky 13 stash I recently received as a gift is Flame of Udûn. indirect lat afternoon sunlight Flame is a dark charcoal, off-black jelly sprinkled with ember-colored microglitters.  There's bits of red and gold in there, most obvious when the light sparks on them. indoor CF lighting The first coat went on a little streaky, as some jellies do, but the second evened things out.  This would probably also work great as one layer over black or very dark grey if you wanted to avoid any secret see-thru patches or don't like hints of VNL. it's a little sheer... but sparkly! Rating:  3 out of 5 stars, a very nice goth shadow sort of color.  The fiery bits of glitter keep it from looking flat black in most lighting. Where to buy:   Lucky 13's web store . ~Michelle

A lovely friend sent me a surprise box in the mail that contained a trio of Lucky 13 polishes, and the gorgeous Now Wrath, Now Ruin, and A Red Dawn immediately demanded to be next on my fingertips. indirect overcast sunlight UUUFFFF.  Wrath & Ruin is a deep, murky teal jelly that dries to a perfectly glassy shine.  There's plenty of silver glitter swimming in this dark water, hexes & squares in a few sizes each, plus a scattering of small blood red hexes. That gorgeous teal gets a bit darker and murkier with each coat (there's one thin and one thick one here), but goes on surprisingly smoothly for a jelly, and is completely self-leveling by the 2nd one.  I love how the silver ends up looking like different shades of teal as the glitter bits flash up from the depths.  Perfect "squishiness" in one bottle. indoor CF lighting In lower lighting (or with less sunlight glinting through), it appears darker, but never approaches almost-...