Sweet Baby Octopolish!

And here's that design I needed a deep purple base for: outdoor, afternoon daylight for all photos On top of my base mani of Glisten & Glow Monster Mash, I've added a 2-step layered plaid design that just happens to perfectly match one of my fave pairs of cool-weather tall socks.   I'm using two of my most workhorse-solid stamping plates here.  The light grey woven-design plaid  is from Hehe 028 (such a great plate that every time I use it I feel the need to check Hehe's store to see if there's anything else I need), then the red accent lines are from Maniology M053 (a plate that everyone needs in their stash, since it's nothing but basic shapes you can use to create any geometric design).  I mattified the whole thing, because  much like last week's autumn leaves, most plaid cloth isn't at all shiny! For a really long time now, I've only occasionally done nail art.  My nails are always done, but with the state of the world I just don't often ...

One good fall leaf deserves another, and this time I went a touch darker in the same red-bronze-gold color palette.   indoor, bright CF lighting About 5 years ago, Parrot Polish released a multichrome collection that was themed around lady pirates.  Always a sucker for a beautiful shifter and not having anything like this one, I picked up Lady Elizabeth Killigrew from the set. outdoor, shady daylight LEK appears to be the same color shift as my beloved Mysterious Mars stamping polish that I used in my last look - in direct light, it's a warm brick- or brown-leaning red, which shifts to coppery bronze and gold at angles, and green at the farthest end of the shift.   indoor, bright CF lighting This is a truly old-skool type duochrome polish, where the shifty shimmer itself is wholly responsible for the color, and the base is a barely-there sheer grey.  This means it takes 3 coats to get to full opacity, but thankfully each coat goes on smooth and even. ...

I've been trying like anything to shop my stash instead of shopping, but wow do plenty of people's swatch photos make that a difficult proposition.  I saw something recently that reminded me of an untried already in my hot little hands, so pulled that out instead of clicking "buy"... indoor, bright CF lighting Briar is a gorgeous jet black jelly filled with what I usually call "ocean" flakies - they shift from cobalt to aqua to emerald, and I even got a hint of purple in there now and then.   outdoor, angled bright sunlight This polish was quite a bit more sheer than I'd expected, and I'm wearing 4 coats to get to the not-quite-opacity you see here.  Though this is very sheer, it applies mostly evenly without obvious streaks - you could sandwich stamping in between the layers easily.   window-filtered direct sunlight Because the jelly base is so sheer, the pinky-neutral of my nail beds shows through, pulling the final color over toward brownish or of...

So many releases lately have featured lush, beautiful, vampy cool-toned colors.  In an effort to hold on to my no/low buy, I went shopping in my stash... and I'm ready to kick myself for letting this one languish unloved for 3 years!! indoor, bright CF lighting Shleee Polish has now and again released a few polishes themed to American Horror Story (in keeping with her creepy-cool aesthetic), and this one rolled out in 2017 along with the Cult season.  I'm showing version 2.0 here, so if this strikes your fancy be aware that there were subtle differences in the amount of shimmer in the 2 versions.  indoor, bright CF lighting Cult 2.0 is a luscious violet jelly filled to the brim with aurora and glassfleck shimmers.  The red flash of the aurora pulls the whole look firmly over to royal purple, and in all lighting it's either shimmer or borderline metallic in its flash. indoor, bright angled lighting This is indeed that flavor of aurora shimmer that comes close to a Cla...

In these times of uncertainty, I've enjoyed painting maybe a little more often, trying to do more nail art than new polish swatches, and Creative Shop 50 keeps being amazing. window-filtered shady daylight CS 50 is a smorgasbord of nature-themed images, from insects to leaf veins to organic geometrics to exotic mammals: credit to Creative Shop I started with the beetles, then moved on to the swirling nexus, and for this look used the rough-textured lines on the top center. Are they tiger stripes or flames or wood grain?  Who knows?  Either way, I love CS plates, and no matter how finely detailed the images are I get consistently good pickup and clarity. outdoor, bright direct sunlight This is one and a half coats of my trusty Nana Coco Love Black, stamped in El Corazon Kaleidoscope True Red (which amazingly stamps right over black with zero issues), and matted with Vapid's Onward Through the Fog. Where to buy:  grab CS plates direct from her store or f...

And as soon as book club was over, back to Halloween designs! indoor, office fluorescent lighting for all photos Continuing my master plan to make all my Halloween looks as different as possible, this round is a skittlette in different colors.  I bought an orange crème polish this year (gasp!) specifically for in case of nail art, and so Turkish import Flormar makes its debut here with the super bright Salmon Sashimi on my pinky (absolutely not salmon colored, very definitively ORANGE).  The pistachio green of Damone Roberts 1968 comes next, then China Glaze Creative Fantasy (over a layer of Cult Casual Elegance to help with opacity for this notoriously streaky jelly).  Skeletons and spiderwebs are my 2 fave Halloween themes, so I had plenty of plates to pick from to end up with this unified theme.  The super tiny dancing skeletons on my pointer and middle fingers are from Dixie Plates 2017 Halloween plate, the single arms-up skeleton is from BM-413, and t...

My book club's recent pick was Madeline Miller's utterly fantastic Circe.  The dramatic cover illustration immediately suggested some matching nail art. The bold black and bronze stylized design is of course very reminiscent of ancient greek pottery, so my stamping design matches the color scheme and theme of the book cover, using a few elements from the story.  Femme Fatale Defiled in Gold provided the perfect base, somewhere between bronze and copper, in 2 easy coats.  My left hand has a portrait of the witch herself from MoYou London Artist 26, plus a 3 headed hydra from Xiuya 22 (a knockoff of MYL's greek mythology series).  My right hand has the minotaur from that same plate, and the greek keys and waves came from Xiuya 20. The book is fantastic, highly recommended! ~Michelle

Last year I had a lot of fun with "all Halloween all October"and then had no time for even a single stamped/nail art design this year.  Instead, I'm going for "all holiday/winter all December" to see if I can knock myself fully back into the nail game. outdoor, indirect daylight Well, I think I rocked it right out of the box.  This is 2 coats of Pahlish Mad Man With a Box, which is still a little thicker than I'd like but didn't chip on me at all like back when I first wore it.  I've layered first a more complex fabric-textured plaid from HeHe 028 in white, and then a thin subtle box plaid in light blue with CJS 06, and finally used a matte topcoat to make this look like soft flannel. outdoor, bright sunlight I love how in bright light the flakies from Mad Man are able to glimmer through the stamping pattern, while still staying understated as though they are slubs in fabric.  Gotta love it when a design actually behaves the way you want ...

For my second round of blues, I switched up to a bright, saturated true-blue, with Heather's Hues The Deepest Kind of Love. indoor, bright CF lighting March's Polish Pick-Up theme was books, and this one takes its inspiration from 'Where the Red Fern Grows,' which as a life-long animal lover and book nerd I'm sheepishly admitting that I've never read. window-filtered overcast daylight Deepest is a gorgeous cobalt blue jelly filled with green iridescent flakes of both standard flakie & microflake sizes.  I think there's also a shimmer in there that's somewhat duochromatic - there's a very obvious purple shift in the bottle, but the below pic is as close as I ever came to seeing it on the nail. window-filtered afternoon daylight Blue polishes are often described as having a sulphuric odor to them, which I rarely notice - this one has a subtle whiff, but nowhere near enough to be off-putting indoor, bright CF lighting As with...

The day after Christmas, my partner and I hopped on a plane to go spend time with family in Colorado through New Year's Eve.  When I go out of town, I never take super special LE polishes, the sort that would be impossible to replace if they got lost out of my luggage.  For the most sparkle-tastic holiday of the year, I wanted to look classy but blingy.  A good stamping plate and some sadly ignored mainstream polishes worked out perfectly! window-filtered overcast daylight First up, for the trip out, I wore Sinful Colors Haute Koffee.  Haute is a luscious, deep, dark, vampy wine with a beautiful shimmer that's utterly hidden by the velvety matte finish.  This is absolutely one of those polishes that you can wear 2 different ways, and would look contrasty enough to be pretty with part of each nail painted in glossy topcoat and part left matte.  I'm wearing 2 coats here, then stamped with a paisley-esque stripe design from Creative Shop 77 using Emily d...

Today, we have what became my absolute fave design of this month's all Halloween all October on my nails! indoor, CF lighting One of the ladies in my Facebook stamping group posted a fantastic black & white Halloween mani with stylized graphic designs that I had to immediately put my own spin on.  I've used a base of 2 coats of Pretty Serious Absence, stamped with bat designs in MoYou London Galaxy and fanged vampire lips in Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn using XXL-3, a huge stamping plate mostly full of sugar skulls.  The Rocky Horror vibe from the lips is adorable, and I was surprised to find so many different bats hidden all over this stamping plate TOTAL DARKNESS In between the white base and the graphic stamping, I've sandwiched a layer of green glow from a very, very old bottle of Wet N Wild glow in the dark polish.  Seriously, this stuff is from college in the 90s!  It needed a few drops of thinner to keep the texture flowing nicely and get r...

More with the event nails!  Friday, I got to go to a fantastic science + music program downtown, so like I've been doing lately, it was time to dress up with a theme. indoor, CF lighitng Over a base of berry jelly (there were subtle flakies in there that didn't particularly show up on the nail at any point), I've stamped in Born Pretty silver stamping polish using Blueness 039 plate.  I love the random swirling of music notations on this plate - each nail will look a little different, and there's no "right way up" so there's no challenge of lining up the design.  All of the Blueness plates I have were super cheap, but all stamp great - big thumbs up.  I added a layer of matte topcoat over the whole design, and I'm really pleased with how this turned out. fancy nails with my enormously fancy pink moonstone ring for our fancy theater tix ~Michelle

This week, the Polish-Aholics Anonymous facebook group hosted a Mani Swap for members that felt like trading around.  I'm always game for new stuff, so sign a girl up! My partner for this adventure is Melissa - check out her instagram @liss_929 .  I had an absolute blast scrolling through all of Melissa's looks and could NOT pick just one (cutting it down to 2 or 3 was a real challenge!) - she does a whole lot of talented free handing and other techniques that I've never tried, so this was a super opportunity to get out of my usual comfort zone and try something new. First up, I went with this super fun geometric stained glass look: Melissa on the left and me on the right Now, since I don't have her kind of freehand skills, my manis are interpretations and riffs on her art rather than a straight copy, with the major difference being that I'm stamping that business. window-filtered daylight I found a great staggered/irregular rectangle pattern on S...

On a Dance Legend bender a couple months ago, I snagged all 3 of the candy flakes collection that caught my eye.  Here's the last one, Tinsel. indoor direct lighting  Tinsel is a bright, true kelly green jelly filled with fire flakies (the sort that shift gold/copper/reddish).  It took 2 coats for even, near-opaque coverage, but more coats = a richer color.  You can definitely build this one up further if you'd like. outdoors on an overcast day The flakes were always visible, but the vibrant, saturated color of the jelly base overwhelmed their color shift pretty much all the time.  In bright lighting, I'd get a subtle flash of gold-ish green, but it's definitely never the fiery color that peeks out of the bottle.  In artificial light, Tinsel is super saturated and super shiny, which tended to downplay the flakes a bit. indoor office fluorescents Word of warning:  that rich color saturation meant that it was a bear to clean up.  I...