Sweet Baby Octopolish!

 Well after something delicate and floral, time to swing right on over to midnight vampy! indoor, bright CF lighting Occasionally some makers, including Femme Fatale, will release "oops batches" where a polish didn't turn out as expected, but the artist kept adding to & tweaking the container until something interesting resulted.  Such things don't have a set formula and are by nature impossible to recreate.  Marble Keys was one such "oops" from November 2015. outdoor, overcast daylight Marble Keys starts out with a smoky charcoal base, a fairly neutral off-black (neither cool nor warm on its own).  The base is sheer and required 3 coats to build up to opacity, but was much more forgiving on clean-up than an opaque black base would have been. indoor, bright CF lighting Layered over this is a coarse, not quite chunky shimmer in a deep malachite green.  It's a little more teal-leaning than emerald, but not at all aquamarine, and is much more GREEN in v...

Well it seems I'm all mixed up on my alternating light then dark looks... so I'm pushing "reset" with a paler shade. indoor, bright CF lighting The man said "blue" when I asked for color inspo, and I decided that would be a soft sky blue instead of a big stormy saturated one.   window-filtered indirect daylight Cadillacquer released Trolljegeren for the October 2021 Monsters & Mythicals PPU.  It's a very sheer, barely-there sky blue that's been jam-packed full of aurora shimmer and opaque matte blue hex glitters in at least 2 sizes. window-filtered indirect daylight The formula on this was absolutely superb, with no fishing or placement needed to get the glitters to spread out roughly evenly, and with extremely simple cleanup. indoor, bright CF lighting It's a bit of a chameleon, looking more sparkly and leaning much warmer in bright light when the aurora shimmer is most prominent.  In lower lighting, the aurora takes a back seat to the subtl...

A fave brand's upcoming collection includes an utterly gorgeous, rich, deep violet, jam-packed with "ocean" flakies, and I just have to... wait a sec, I'm sure I've bought this before... indoor, bright CF lighting KB shimmer released the gorgeous Ready For This Jelly as an exclusive for PolishCon 2016.  It's a deep, saturated, bottom-of-the-sea violet packed with the "ocean" type iridescent flakies that shift aqua to blue to green.  outdoor, shady/overcast daylight This polish went on like a dream in 3 perfectly smooth coats, giving me zero problems with the brush or formula.   indoor, bright CF lighting Interestingly enough, this polish starts out purple and very sheer on the first coat, yet somehow builds to looking violet and if anything leans slightly more blue than purple.  I've no idea how it leans cooler-toned with each coat, but the end result is stunning and looks just as vibrant as the bottle.  outdoor, shady/overcast daylight If the lu...

 While I was ready to switch back to a lighter shade, I wasn't entirely ready to let go of green, and yet didn't just want a pale version of my last look... indoor, bright CF lighting Dreamland Lacquer released The King & The Queen as their offering for the August 2019 "At the Carnival" themed PPU. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight King & Queen has a soft grey crelly base that leans ever so slightly verdigris, like the palest edge to an old, worn dollar bill.  It's packed with iridescent flakes that flash from pink to gold to green. indoor, bright CF lighting The flakie density makes this polish just a bit thicker than I prefer, getting instantly sticky on application such that getting up to the sides of the nail smoothly and wrapping the free edge is tricky.  And yet, it wore like iron, with no chipping or visible edgewear after several days, so a well-performing formula anyway. outdoor, shady/overcast daylight I'd meant to use this as a base for a sta...

For my next dark/saturated colored look, I wanted to go with something springtime, or traditionally girly, and reached for a rich wine. indoor, bright CF lighting Pahlish released What Would Carole Baskin Do? as their contribution to the December 2020 "everything's fine" themed PPU.  I never watched 'Tiger King' and certainly DGAF about the drama on that show, but I do love me a rich wine nail polish. outdoor, shady/indirect daylight WWCBD (which certainly wins as one of the most unwieldy names in my collection) is an incredibly saturated dark magenta in direct light, a bit more pink than wine, perhaps, and I honestly wondered why I'd been so keen on this one (not being a connoisseur of pinks). outdoor, bright angled daylight Then I saw that duochromatic shimmer flash in the sunlight and aaaaaaah yes, I remembered exactly why I felt the need to grab this beauty.  indoor, bright CF lighting The shimmer goes from wine to gold to peridot green, giving the overall...

Well, when you do one hand light and the other dark, it throws the whole "alternate each mani between those" plan to the wind, so I decided to reset with a fresh, light color.  indoor, bright CF lighting Arctic Chill was a custom made for Ethereal Lacquer's fan group back in 2020.  It's basically the super bright aurora shimmer that's very much a part of her house style loaded into a delicate aqua-blue base. outdoor, direct sunlight In any degree of sunlight, this is a stunner - super fiery, sparking bronze-red to gold in direct light, and shifting over to green at angles. outdoor, direct sunlight The base is quite sheer, as is evidenced by air bubble easily visible in the bottle shots, and I'm wearing 3 coats to get to the degree of opacity you see here. indoor, bright CF lighting The sheerness means this would would be perfectly effective as a topper over any color that complimented the base color (blues, aquas, greens, and cool-leaning purples). outdoor, di...

 This week's light polish (that theme has worked for a whole 3 weeks haha!) is a super bright silver. indoor, bright CF lighting Tonic released I Had the Times Square of My Life way back in 2017 as a store exclusive for Color 4 Nails, and I'd originally passed on it because it was sold as a duo with a red polish that wasn't my jam.  I managed to snag a bottle when Tonic cleared out the vault and it is indeed super sparkly! outdoor, shaded daylight Times Square is a sheer, light silver base filled with both holo dust and holo glitter, and a bunch of metallic multichrome flakies.   outdoor, bright afternoon sunlight Turns out it also has a surprise flame of metallic contrast shimmer that shifts a bit from pale gold to warm copper, which catches and reflects any bright light shining on it. indoor, bright CF lighting Though I can see a bit of VNL in some of these photos, that wasn't the case IRL - Times Square was nicely visually opaque in just 2 smooth easy coats. ...

 Time to bounce back to a dark shade... but apparently I'm stuck on green right now. indoor, bright CF lighting Cirque Colors released Raven back in 2016 as part of a collection celebrating the Manus x Machina exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I have two of these polishes, and love them both! window-filtered shady daylight Raven is a somewhat sheer black jelly that is filled with a subtly duochromatic shimmer that gives a ghostly green shine in most all lighting.  I'm showing 2 coats here, which was enough for visual opacity. indoor, angled CF lighting At very steep angles, this shimmer flips over to a murky eggplant purple, but this wasn't immediately evident without acrobatic poses to specifically elicit the flip - in other words, not the sort of duochrome where different colors peek over the curve of the nail. window-filtered shady daylight In very bright light, this does indeed appear to be green more than black, as shown in most of my pics.  T...