Sweet Baby Octopolish!

Continuing both my light & dark alternating manis and my deep dive into Enchanted untrieds in my stash, I pulled out one that I neglected for years.  It's funny how much your "mood" can play into whether a polish works for you or not. When I originally bought Enchanted's February 2017 mystery, I was pretty ho-hum about it, just another pastel holo.  I was wrong. indoor, bright CF lighting The 2017 mysteries were all "remixes" of early, hard-to-find colors, with this one being an updated version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.  The rarity and gotta-have-it-ness of the original (other nail blogs showed direct comparisons between this and the original as being extremely close) was frankly the only reason I kept this one, since I didn't think at the time it was something I'd necessarily love.   indoor, bright CF lighting Again, seriously y'all, I was wrong.  Feb 2017 is a desaturated, nearly white linear holo.  It's a little sheer on the fi...

It's the height of summer dragonfly season, and I've been seeing so many beautiful jewels flying around that I was absolutely inspired to bring some with me everywhere I go. On my "jelly donut mani" base of 1 coat Fancy Gloss Got Milk + 1 coat Ethereal White Smoke, I've stamped several different dragonfly images from KADS Flower 015 and any other plate I found with a realistic looking design.  I then filled in the dragonfly bodies were with various holos, some as leadlighting and some as reverse-stamping... but then promptly could not get a bright sunlight photo to show off the sparkle.   I totally loved this look, wearing it for a whole week.  Hope you get out to enjoy some summer sunshine while it lasts! ~Michelle 

 Some of the super hot nail trends that pop up on everyone's feed really crack me up.  Most aren't so much a "trend" as "that one time someone did something over-the-top for a nail art competition, and someone felt the need to make a post about it."   outdoor, bright daylight This time around, though, the "trend" is certainly trending, with the "jelly donut look" gracing the fingers of celebs and city dwellers in the know all over instagram.  In my eyes, though, it's just a sheer, soft, white, and it just so happens I wanted exactly that for my next nail art look, so I wore it solo for a day too. indoor, bright CF lighting My version is a super shiny iridescent, but still translucent enough to look like the glaze on a donut (sidebar: why are these called jelly donuts and not glazed donut nails??).  I've used 1 coat Fancy Gloss Got Milk, then 1 coat Ethereal White Smoke, plus my usual base & top coats, and wow was this quick bu...

 Our latest book club pick did not sit well with me.  I had a huge hate for that book, and tossed it in the "life is too short" pile and moved on.  I'm not going to mention the particular book for a whole lot of reasons that have to do with avoiding search engine shenaniganery, and so instead let's focus on the fiery duochromes that went into my "F this book" look. indoor, bright CF lighting I started this look with a base of straight piano-black crème, then pulled out a bottle  of very long untried Dragon Heartstring from Nvr Enuff. outdoor, bright daylight Dragon Heartstring is a topper that's got a whole lot going on - that means it's actually dense enough to wear solo if you don't mind 3-4 coats, but the flashy elements play much better over darker colors, and I'm using classic black to make it really sing. outdoor, bright daylight There's a generous helping of linear holo in this mix, as well as duochromatic pigment that flips from w...

This series has been rather fun, ricocheting back and forth from light to dark.  After my last super vampy but not quite black, I rebounded all the way over to iridescent white. all photos indoors with bright CF lighting Shleee Polish has been a huge fave of mine for a couple of years now.  She's absolutely a master at shimmery sparkle that contrasts beautifully (but never clashes) with a different base color, and I keep being lured into her weekly releases though I'm trying my darndest to stick to a no-buy otherwise. Ghostly Snapshot is a barely mint-tinted white crelly base, jam packed with a lovely coarse-milled aurora shimmer that shifts from spring pink in direct light to gold at slight angles, then on over to vibrant metallic spring green at steeper angles.  I'm wearing 3 coats here to bring this to full opacity. I was fairly hard on my hands this week, and the weather is utter crap, so I have only bottle shots indoors and no outdoor sunshine.  Also, these phot...

Wanting something a little more low-key for this New Year's Eve, skipping out on a look stamped with celebration, I picked something that would have the fireworks embedded within. indoor, bright CF lighting Dragon Glass was Cuticula's offering in the August '21 "elements" PPU.  It's a black jelly packed with iridescent jewel-toned flakies, giving a very 'black opal' look. bright daylight To let those flakies shine brightly out of such a darkly colored base, this polish is sheer - much more so than I was expecting, in fact.  I have plenty of other flakie polishes with richly saturated bases, so it didn't occur to me that using it as a topper was the way to go, and I'm showing 3 and a half coats here. indoor, bright CF lighting In bright lighting indoors or out, the sheerness overlying my skin tone meant that this polish looked charcoal-grey or a warm-leaning off-black rather than true deep dark BLACK black. outdoor, shaded daylight In low light,...

 I keep asking myself "how on earth could something so beautiful be locked away untried in the stash for so long?" when I pull out an older yet inexplicably unloved polish... and then something like this leaps out of the package and straight onto my nails because OOH SHINY. outdoor, shady daylight Ethereal Lacquer is easily the most accurately named brand out there, with these beautifully otherworldly shimmer polishes being her distinctive house style.   outdoor, bright daylight Silver Crystal is not even slightly silver, but is most certainly crystalline, tilting from gold to green to aqua to pink.  It's a clear base with very fine-milled iridescent shimmer particle of a sort that several brands have released lately.  Most folks are either showing this over white to get a faery-worthy pearlesence, or of course over black to make the shifty shimmer really pop, but the density of the shimmer had me wanting to try this on its own. window-filtered direct daylight I...

I'm finding inspiration in a lot of unusual places lately, instead of simply picking something on my own.  This time, from an ad, while trying to convince myself to not buy more stamping plates.  indoor, CF lighting One of my fave plate makers sent me an email this week announcing some new releases.  The featured mani was a plain nude crème stamped in black and gold with a mix of graphic shapes.  I thought there were a few plates already here that would soothe that need, so I instead put together a variation on that look. outdoor, overcast daylight I've started with a base of Bee's Knees T-Virus, a very sheer rosy pink jelly base that is absolutely filled to the brim with both very delicate translucent iridescent flakies and a boatload of metallic shimmer that shifts green to gold to pink.  indoor, CF lighting The shimmer usually steals the show, making this sheer polish appear opaque in just 2 coats.  In soft, diffuse lighting that d...

Femme Fatale makes a number of polishes with slightly or significantly more chunky holo glitters, and with the recent bout of all sun all the time, I was definitely feeling some holo.  The fact that I was feeling like also dealing with glitter, though, is quite unusual and not to be passed up (far too many pretty bottles of glitter sit unloved around here because I don't want to hassle with the removal).  Perusing my stash, I discovered an untried sample and a glitterbomb, both with equally nautical names, so surely meant to be together. indoor, CF lighting Sound of the Sea, as the bottle says right there, was a part of a sample sale from July 2016.  Femme Fatale releases batches of samples periodically, not on any particular schedule, and each of the bottles is a completely unique one of a kind study that may or may not have been developed further to make it into a regular collection.  This one "feels" to me like it'd fit in with the color palette of the Birt...

As is often the case when I need a starting point to select a polish, I check in with my partner, who helpfully suggests a base color.  As he's done more often lately, though, he got awfully specific this time:  "blue with green flakies." indoor, bright CF lighting Illyrian Alfheim is a lovely cool cerulean blue - somewhere between sky and cobalt, but closer to the latter.  It's a quite sheer jelly to allow the iridescent "ocean" type flakies - the sort from the old Nfu-oh polishes that shift from green to aqua to blue - to shine through. window-filtered overcast daylight I'm wearing 3 coats here.  The base color was a touch uneven until 3rd coat, but the sea of flakies distributed very evenly on each coat and actually looked best at the 2nd.  The 3rd coat meant the flakies started to layer over top of each other, and look more like a full wall of shimmer rather than individual separate pigment elements. window-filtered afternoon sunlight...