Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 It's March, and that's my birthday month and St Patrick's Day month, and my fave color is green... all of which means I've now become convinced it's all-green month (because hey, I need a creative way to pick which treasure left too-long-buried in my stash needs to be tried out). indoor, bright CF lighting Ethereal lives up to the name yet again with Rainforest - instead of a dark, mysterious jungle, we have a light, airy, cool wisp of green tint, filled to the brim with finely milled aurora shimmer.  While it's possible to wear this extremely sheer polish on its own, this color combo tends to emphasize rather than blur my nails' free edge, so I searched through the stash for a base choice that would get me closest to the look in the bottle. indoor, CF lighting Pretty Serious had a series of polishes called "The Museum of Naileontology" that were her versions of very hard to find mainstream gems.  This one is Disc of the Heavens, her nod to Chanel...

After wearing such a complex polish as CrowsToes Betelgeuse, a neutral was in order to change things up. indoor, CF lighting Yet another polish left to languish untried for far too long, Pretty Serious released The Night Before... with their Holiday 2015 collection.  It's a deep, dark, not-quite-black filled to the brim with silver metallic microflake shimmer, resulting in an overall foil look. indoor, bright CF lighting This went on perfectly smooth and perfectly opaque in 2 coats.  It's definitely not the most flashy or complex polish in my stash, but wow is it an incredible base for nail art.  Speaking of which... outdoor, overcast daylight Because we were getting our first heavy snowstorm of winter around here, the man said it obviously called for a snowflake look.  Who am I to refuse an inspiration that direct?  This is of course the lovely assortment of individual snowflakes from HeHe Fairy Tale 03 - I've used this plate for similar looks before and probab...

Suzy had the marvelous idea to get the heck out of dodge for the Thanksgiving holiday and let someone else do the dishes, so we just spent a week in sunny Puerto Rico! indoor, bright CF lighting Now, I don't have a whole post worth of pics, because I was too busy being on vacation (don't hate, just bask in remembered sunshine with me).  BUT this one pic right here tells you pretty much everything you need to know.  Pretty Serious is becoming my go-to vacation nail polish:  it's gorgeous, it wears great, touch-ups if needed are no biggie because the formula is so nice to work with, and if something happens to the bottle I can grab more in her store later (i.e., this isn't LE). outdoor, cloudy sunlight shining down on a very old fort in old San Juan Khepri's Amulet is from Kaz' amazing "Museum of Naileontology" series, where she's captured the look and color of some very old, very hard to find polishes - in this case, Street Wear Hippy Di...

This past week had me off to another  work trip, this time for CE and hanging out with my colleagues from the other side of the country, so I went with professionally subtle, but with a definite nailista flair. indoor for all pics I was inspired by the lovely Emily de Molly - she had a gorgeous mani that involved flakies under a white stamp, and my new HeHe plates were just begging to be used. This is one coat of Girly Bits Enabler, a gorgeously bright and seriously shifty iridescent flakie - it's more shocking pink than Essie Shine of the Times and her dupes, and I think might actually hit a few more colors overall, too.  I've then topped it with the freeflow watermarble pattern from HeHe 037, from their "Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio" collection. Like most round plates, this one is pretty petite and I honestly would have liked it more if the marble design occupied an even half (or more) of the plate, instead of having the adorable goldfish an...

Watermarbles are super pretty, super trendy, and a stupendous pain in the ass - I'm just way too lazy to spend 10 minutes per nail.  I'm apparently not the only one, as tutorials on how to cheat them using silicone mats or nail vinyls or dragging a needle across your nail surface abound everywhere.  Since I'm not alone in avoiding watermarbles, Bundle Monster released a stamping plate in 2015 that was a blogger collaboration with marbling pro Sloteazzy that's been sold out several times now. indirect daylight Short review: it's amazing.  Good, clear etching, and plenty of design space no matter how long your nails. To start off with, I used OPI's Christmas Gone Plaid, a deep dark evergreen crème that's aaaalmost a one-coater (2 here) and shiny before topcoat.  The formula is very nice and stays where you put it; this pic has very minimal cleanup involved.  Watch out, as per usual for blues/greens this heavily pigmented, it'll stain the crap out o...

Continuing my back-and-forth of dramatic vampy winter colors alternating with neutrals, today I have Cadillacquer's A Dragon is Not a Slave, from their 2015 GOT collection. indoor, bright CF lighting The lovely bronze-copper flash on the edge of the bottle and down the middle of the nail is not at all a trick of the light - this is absolutely how Dragon rolls.  We have here a warm, taupe-y grey with a delicate linear holo and plenty of fiery shimmer. UNF.  DAT SHIMMER. The shimmer is subtly duochromatic, appearing more reddish coppery directly, and more golden bronze at angles. outdoor, direct sunlight The holo here, as with both of the other Cadillacquer polishes I've tried, is what some people call "scattered linear," not the sort with a blinding holo flame.  The very fine refractive particles create sort of a light dusting of rainbow. outdoor, direct sunlight The overall effect is of a smouldering fire within smoky ashes, and it's a ...

I was away on a lovely (and long overdue!) vacation mid-December, and my Pretty Serious haul had just arrived when it was time to pick a few bottles to pack up with me.  Sparkly Mummy Mush caught my eye immediately and was the first thing I put on.  It wore like IRON, looking flawless a week later.  I just had to repeat this one for my New Year's Eve mani. indoor, CF lighting This is a gold polish with a whole lot going on. First off, Mummy Mush is a delicate, sheer pink base: window-filtered daylight.  check out how pink the color is where the light shines through Packed with sparkling glass flecks that shift from gold to green to electric turquoise: window-filtered daylight And packed with enough gold shimmer to produce a hammered-metal foil sort of effect: window-filtered daylight The overall effect is subtly shifty, like it's a surprise duochrome.  The pink base warms the color up and keeps it from being too stark, while the aqua spar...

Pretty Serious Cosmetics has a handful of really interesting collaboration shades (they know how to pick their bloggers!), but the one that was an immediate must have when I saw it was Swatch and Learn. indoor, CF lighting.  check out that color shift along the bottle S&L has a very yellow-leaning jelly base that puts it firmly in that "pretty/ugly" camp of unusual shades - the only thing remotely similar in my stash is  Orly's It's Not Rocket Science .  Like the Orly polish, this one has a duochromatic microflake shimmer, but this one is so sparkly that it most often looks like a glassfleck. bright sunlight The sunlight photo is how S&L appeared most of the time in bright light indoors or out - yellow green and super sparkly, with the shimmer taking on a silvery sparkle.  In lower light, though, the microflakes showed off their chameleon powers. window-filtered daylight Oh yessssss - that bottle shot didn't lie, these little flakes shift...

Early this year, Pretty Serious Cosmetics started a collection called "The Museum of Naileontology," with the idea that each polish is an "homage" (she doesn't ever call them dupes) to an old, hard to find classic.  In this past week's green nail polish haul from these guys, I picked up 2 of the 3 inaugural shades, and first up is The Dragon's Curse. indirect, window-filtered sunlight Dragon's Curse is a granny-smith-apple green full of a gorgeous ultrafine golden shimmer.  It's theoretically a nod to OPI's Creme de Menthe, or else Misa's Silk Robe - in either case, they're impossible to even find on ebay, let alone attempt to purchase one.   Kaz has both of them , so whichever one it secretly is, you know it's as close as we're all going to get. indirect, overcast light The formula on this was a little thicker than I'd like (no chance at all for thin coats), but it self-leveled perfectly, and was quite toleran...