Pearly Whites

This is Triple Shine Pearly Whites:

This is a shard-type flakie in a milky base, #14 on the wheel. You can't see the two here to compare, but looking at the wheel, I noticed that the colors look pretty much identical to the polish I showed last, Fairy Snot. My guess is that they're the same type of base, just cut into different-size pieces. I've mostly ignored this polish since I bought it (on clearance at a K-Mart, as you can see). I need to put it over something dark and give it a full-fledged try, because the colors in it are really prettier than I gave it credit for.

Triple Shine was a Sally Hansen polish line, but I'm pretty sure it's discontinued. Sally Hansen seems to switch lines around a lot - Color Therapy and Miracle Gel in; Triple Shine and Diamond Strength out. (You can see that it's not on the list here.)

Fairy Snot

This is Chick Fairy Snot, over black:

The label was falling off anyway so I stuck it where you could see it in the picture. On the wheel, it's #10. You can see that over a black base it sparkles as blue and green. Over a lighter color it usually just picks up the sparkle, primarily, as I recall. (I stuck this bottle in my little acrylic rack where I thought I'd see it and proceeded to treat it as invisible for a year or two. It's been a while since I wore it.) In the bottle, at least, it almost looks like this is actually just flakies milled up very fine, but it's hard to tell. It doesn't seem to be as showy as a full-on holo glitter, but it's still really pretty.

I really liked Chick nail polish but unfortunately they seem to be out of business.

Elle's Spell

This is Barielle Elle's Spell:

This is a red/orange flakie in a magenta-ish jelly base. I was having trouble reading my own numbers above, but this is alone on the wheel above on #8 and over black on #9 (or 6, as I first read it, and was briefly very confused). Anyway, this is a classic.

Apparently Elle's Spell came out as part of Barielle's holiday collection in 2010, per Scrangie, and I tend to take what Scrangie says as gospel. It's still available - although apparently it's not current in the "Shades" line (which is the bottles like the one above) but only in the Protect Plus line, instead.

Petra

This is Petra, the second of the two Marc Jacobs polishes that I bought recently:

This is a sort of pinkish-brown metallic, and I pointed out when I first showed my new Marc Jacobs purchases that this polish is actually really similar to Lancome Hotel Particulier. I'll repeat the picture that's at the bottom of that entry, that shows the two of them next to each other:

Hotel P on the left (with the name upside down), Petra on the right. This is two coats of Hotel P and only one of Petra, as opposed to the top picture, which is two coats. I compared them again in person after I added the second coat of Petra, and Petra is if anything actually darker than Hotel P in the end. (Both pictures were taken in the same light, and if you compare the two pictures you can get a pretty clear idea of the differences.) They're quite similar, but they are definitely not dupes.

Shine Of The Times

This is Essie Shine of the Times:

You can see on the bottle that this was from the Lux Effects collection. It's #11 on the wheel - it's kind of what I think of as the "standard" flakie color - or at least the most common one I've seen - the one that shimmers sort of copper to green (with maybe another couple of colors in there as well). The way this one differs from others I've tried is that this one has the heaviest concentration of flakes, by far.

Here it is over Free Spirit:

These two pictures weren't taken at the same time but they were taken in the same spot with the same lighting, but I don't think you can really tell too much from this picture. It looked far prettier than it shows up here, for one thing. And I think that the copper color was more visible in real life than here.

Oui!

This is Marc Jacobs Oui!

This is a bit of an in-between color - it looks pink in some pictures and more purple in others. I thought at first glance that it was more of a fuchsia - I think maybe the base is more to the pink or magenta side and it's the shimmer that pulls it more purple. Also, while it's not a full-on jelly, it has a jelly-ish base. I would say that three coats are optimum, and that translucent, jelly-like base is the magical thing that sets this polish above other similar colors. It seems to glow, in certain lights.

I just bought this recently so I almost said "it's definitely current" without looking; however, I did look and this color is actually not showing up on Marc Jacobs Beauty right now. I don't know if that's just because they had the 50% off sale recently and it just dropped off because it's out of stock, or if it's actually discontinued. It is still showing up on Sephora, though. (And back to the subject of the color: Sephora's website calls it "magenta violet" - I'm not really sure that clarifies things any further, though!)

Royal Treatment

This is Morgan Taylor Royal Treatment:

It's a nice dark plummy creme, a bit on the dusty side. (I bought mine at Loxa Beauty marked down to half-price, which suggests it may be a discontinued color.) I haven't worn this yet but I'm definitely going to have to try it out soon.

I Wanna Be A Part Of It

This is Ever After I Want To Wanna Be A Part Of It, which is an LE polish:

This is a pale-purple (would you call it lilac? I'm never sure) almost-metallic with a lot of little flakie shards floating around in it. I did a NOTD entry for this polish but apparently I either forgot to take a bottle-and-wheel picture, or lost the one I took, because I don't seem to have posted it. (And then I had trouble finding this version of the picture because I titled it Ever After, which is the name of the indie polish company, not the polish. I'm frankly trying not to focus on the polish name because it's (a) awfully long and (b) gives me a horrible earworm.)

This is a PolishCon polish, which means it's meant to be very limited edition. I've never bought anything from Ever After before, but it was already on my indie polish list so I'd run across it before somewhere along the line. (I'm now eyeing You Had Me At Merlot. And also that Nine Zero which is on the PolishCon page this week. And I already ordered that limited edition Kathleen Lights polish (here) so I have no business buying anything else right now.)

Note the spelling here; I keep wanting to spell it the other ("correct") way.

Harlow

Here is Zoya Harlow, one of Zoya's Matte Velvet colors:

This is a plummy red-violet. (Scrangie called this mauve, but to me this isn't dusty enough to be mauve.) For comparison, here is Peachy Polish's swatch post also, where you can see the shimmer in it really well. Like a lot of people, I usually end up wearing the matte velvets with top-coat, mostly because it brings out the shimmer. Some of them have silver shimmer and some have tonal, but this one seems to have both.

The original Matte Velvet set of six, including Harlow, came out in 2009, and various parts of it have been re-released in subsequent years, generally around the holidays. It's not a current color but it might be findable at Amazon etc. There was also a newer set of six that was released in 2015 (and re-released this past fall) and those are still showing up on Zoya's website if you're just interested in trying out a Matte Velvet. I didn't buy any of the new set since I have most of the older ones and the colors in the new set didn't particularly seem to be screaming my name or anything - but my impression is that they're a similar formula, just different shades.

(Added: this was in my 2015 top 10.)

Strawberry Fields

This is China Glaze Strawberry Fields:

I posted a swatch way back when for this polish but I didn't really say much about it at the time other than that it leaned coral. (To me this leans much more coral than it looks in the bottle, in fact.) Scrangie calls it a medium pink with gold glass-fleck shimmer, and I suppose it's the gold that makes it look more like a coral. This came out way back in 2009, apparently, and is still available as a core CG color.

I found this "promotional clip" for Strawberry Fields (the song, that is, not the polish) on YouTube, and I thought I'd share since I don't remember having seen it before:

and should you wish to know more about this song, it has a pretty detailed Wikipedia page. (Actually this made me realize that I've always felt like this song was slightly out of tune - even though I do actually like it a lot - and the fact that they were splicing together versions in more than one key during the production process presumably explains why.)

I'm The Ultimate Fangirl

Here's another Dollish mini, I'm The Ultimate Fangirl (here over Orly Color Blast Free Spirit):

I've had this polish for, I think, three years or so and I've never worn it. But actually it's pretty cute when you goop it on like this. I liked it in Accio Lacquer's pictures but in person I never quite warmed to it. I've come to think mixed glitters like this are just not really my thing, anyway. But sometime soon I'll have to bestir myself and at least wear it as an accent nail.

India

Here's Zoya India:

This is from the Ignite collection, along with Remy and Sansa. I got Remy first and I was crazy about it so I went and got more, but... I somehow failed to really fall in love with this one. You can see in the bottle that there's a lot going on but somehow it doesn't show up so much on the nail. Zoya describes it as "a deep, luxurious red with a gold liquid metallic shimmer" but I also notice in their pictures it looks much brighter than it does here. It also looks better on the early swatch I did, mostly because it looks somewhat brighter there too, I think. This is not a bad polish in any case, you understand, it's just a polish where I expected more oomph than I actually got from it. (I think this is the one where I layered something jelly-ish over it at one point - Ruby Pumps, I think it was - and I did totally love that combo.)

Be Our Guest

Here's Morgan Taylor Be Our Guest, the other Beauty and the Beast polish that I bought:

It's a rose color with a little coral to it. It's maybe a little too coral for my taste, really, but I'm sure I'll wear it. (Huh. Loxa's page for it calls it a "bold berry creme" - which... well, I don't see much berry going on here, unless they're maybe thinking strawberry. When I think berry I generally think much more purple-leaning than this.)

Anyway, this is a pretty color and I assume these colors will be available at least until the movie comes out, unless they sell out before that!

The Last Petal

Here is Morgan Taylor The Last Petal:

This is from the Beauty and the Beast tie-in line. (This line came out very early, considering that the movie is not out for a little over a month. But maybe since it has reds and pinks, they wanted it out in time for Valentine's Day.) The Last Petal is right on that line between red and pink, and super-shimmery. It's almost like a blackened fuchsia - like a rose, I suppose, as it should be.

I need to change my polish - I'm wearing another new one, Oui!, but I've had it on all weekend and it's looking a bit banged-up. Since tomorrow is V-Day, I'm hesitating between this or maybe the Nine Zero I bought. This one seems the most appropriate though.

Marc Jacobs Enamored

You know how I kept saying I'd been buying too much stuff, lately? I think I've posted all the rest of it, and this is the last of the nail polish binge. I hope I can restrain myself for a while after this. But Marc Jacobs' website had a 50% off sale on polish (which was still going on when I wrote this, but now appears to be over). I almost talked myself into buying enough to get free shipping (which was $50, I believe) but sanity prevailed and I only bought two polishes in the end.

As is usually the case with high-end stuff, it came extremely well-packaged:

These are the shiniest boxes (short of actually being chrome or something) that I ever remember seeing. You can see the reflection of the bubble-wrap in them.

"Enamored" is the name for the whole polish line, apparently. Here's the polishes I bought:

And here's the back side of the box, which has a little window where you can see the polishes:

Oui! is on the left, the pinky-purple one, and Petra is the metallic.

The cap on the bottle is just as shiny as the box. Here you can see my ceiling fan, my phone, and - I think - an extremely distorted reflection of me.

As you might guess, the big cap comes off and there's a more standard cap underneath. I actually really like this bottle shape - it's easy to hold. And in case you missed it on the box above, it's 13ml (or 0.43 oz.), so a reasonable size.

Anyway, I do really like these polishes. I was going to save the swatches for later, but I do have to show you this much: Petra is actually really similar to Lancome Hotel Particuliere:

This is only one coat of Petra, I think with two it would probably look even more similar. I do really like HP, though, and I had complained about how small the bottle was, so now I have a backup of sorts! (I don't think they're actually dead dupes - but they seem awfully close.)

Love Me Some Pie

This is Dollish Love Me Some Pie (a mini):

This is from the Ultimate Fandom collection and it's meant to be a Supernatural reference. (I thought of Twin Peaks, first, but I guess Sam & Dean love their pie, too. I watched Supernatural for, like, the first five years - but that still means I gave up on it ages ago.) Anyway, you can see that this is glitter mix in a sort of rosy-pink base, leaning toward a cherry color. This is two coats and three might get it further along towards the bottle color.

This is still on Dollish's website even though it's long sold out, which makes me think there's a chance it might make a return appearance some time.

Free Spirit

This is Orly Color Blast Free Spirit:

This is a Frozen tie-in polish; it came in a "Sister Duo" with an ice-blue that presumably was the Elsa polish. This is really just your basic fuchsia creme,* but it's a very pretty one. I did several swatches of this with various top-coats over it - you can see a couple of those here. (My favorite of that bunch was Shine of the Times over Free Spirit, which may be the one at the very bottom, but I'm not sure about that since I don't have the wheel in front of me.)

*Added: I came across another post where I talked about this polish - not the same as either of the ones below - where I quote somebody else as saying this is not a creme, it's a crelly. I'm always terrible at spotting crellies unless it's super-obvious but I'm going to go on the assumption that they are correct.

Here's my original comparison post showing several different colors similar to this. And here's the picture with the duo as I first saw it, as a birthday present.

I'm pretty sure this is discontinued - I suspect it was snapped up more by the people collecting "Frozen" merchandise than for the polish itself. And this polish, at least, is hardly unique.

Ignite + More Stuff I Don't Need

Here is Formula X Ignite:

I talked about this the other day, and here's my previous post-with-swatch (in which I don't really say much at all). Maybe I should go reswatch the mini and compare them all, because this looks much different. Darker than Sephora's picture, and also darker on the nail than that original swatch, and lighter in the bottle - although it was in shadow there so that part makes more sense. If I remember to do that later I'll report back. (Added: I did swatch and compare, and the two swatches looked exactly alike, the one from the bottle above and the one from the mini - as they should. It's Sephora's picture that doesn't look much like the actual polish.)

The other nail thing I bought was a mistake, but I decided to keep it anyway. I intended to order a backup NailsInc base-coat (the Superfood one, which is all I've been using lately), but I screwed up and somehow ordered top-coat instead. I eventually decided just to keep it; I'll use it, I'm sure. I had a mini of it and liked it. (I looked to see if NailsInc had a matte top-coat, because that's what I've been using the most of, but I didn't see one on Sephora's website.)

And then I have been on a tear about scented candles, so I bought a Nest Candle while I was ordering. It's beautiful and man, it smells wonderful:

I didn't pry the candle out of its wrapping to take a picture of it, but the votive is decorated with the same print that's on the box. The only problem is that Birchwood Pine smells totally like a Christmas scent - and I'm pretty sure of this by now because I keep opening it up to clandestinely sniff occasionally. (Is that weird?) Basically, it smells like that Mrs Meyers pine scent that I always look for around the holidays, but even better. I'm not sure if I'll break down and go ahead and use it now, or wait until next Christmas. I'm old enough now that time flies, and 10 months doesn't really seem like all that long to wait. (And I'm barely postmenopausal. Does it go even faster later, or does it slow down again? I suspect the former.)

January 2016 (the 9-0 way)

This is Nine Zero January 2016:

In case you don't know about these already, Jess (aka jessFACE90 from YouTube) did a set of these last year, one polish a month with no name other than the month and the year. (Naming polishes must be kind of a bear and it's kind of cool to see somebody do polishes with bare-bones names, occasionally!) I resisted these until the year was over, but then everybody talked about them so much I decided I wanted to try one while they're still available, and I looked at all of them and decided to go with my reliable favorite berry color. They all have the same formula as I understand it - kind of a hybrid holo/holo glitter thing, I think? It's hard to see what all is going on in there. I haven't worn this yet (mostly because I'm saving it for V-Day) but it looks really pretty, and I'll surely have more to say about it once I've worn it.

All 12 of them appear to be available, as of early Friday when I wrote this. I imagine that's a "while they last" kind of thing, though.

Bit Faker

Here's Butter London Bit Faker - which is another polish I missed on my first pass through my stash:

I really love this polish, but then it's the kind of mixed-metal thing that I reliably go wild over. It's pretty simple, really, it's a packed glitter with mixed bits of copper and bronze. As you can see, you can make it opaque really easily (I'm questioning myself there: is this really only ONE coat? But I show the second coat on Knackered, below it, so I was obviously keeping track. I think you can see that I'm a good way down on this bottle, so it's also possible it's gotten thicker.) But I also have worn this as a top-coat; you definitely do have to make an effort to make the coats light in order to do that, though, I have to say.

I bought my bottle of this at Marshall's, I think (if it wasn't Marshall's it was Ross) so clearly it was marked down, and indeed I don't see it on BL's website. I wish I had a backup for this - you can find it around online, but as far as I see you're going to pay something closer to BL's usual list price of $15 than the $4.99 or so I paid for mine. (I'm not taking any credit for my own cleverness here, mind, because I didn't even go looking for it. I was in Marshall's looking for shoes or something and I just happened to see it. The only part where I was clever is that I knew when I saw it that it was something I definitely wanted.)

(I added tags to indicate that it was in my 2015 favorites.)

NOTD: Zoey + Aurora Borealis

Here is one coat of KL Polish Zoey, which looks matte and totally shows off my ridgy fingernails here, but actually in person looked much better.

It's not unflattering on me. It might be as close to a skin-toned polish as I'd care to get, because anything paler looks awful on me. I've done a lot of experimenting on that account over the years and I'm sure of that.

I was going to put something sparkly and fairly no-color over this, was my plan, but I somehow ended up with Aurora Borealis from Lucky 13 instead:

It still looks fairly neutral in this light but I don't think that's really think it's as neutral as it appears here. It's a multichrome flakie that seems to show up most often as green and pink. ( don't particularly think this is a good combo.)

Aurora Borealis was an LE polish, I'm pretty sure. Zoey was sold out when last I looked at KL Polish but I would think is likely to be restocked.

January Play! box

So here's last month's Sephora Play bag (or bag-in-a-box, or what have you):

In case you are reading on a phone or something and you can't read this (because the contrast is definitely not very high) it says, "Sweat is just another way to glow." The theme for January was "Beauty, Set, Go."

Sephora has finally stopped pretending they're sending everybody exactly the same things, which I think they really were doing in the beginning but couldn't realistically continue doing indefinitely, to my mind. And it's kind of silly not to just say so when everybody can compare their boxes online. The video now shows things in categories - for moisturizers, there were several different ones this month, but I think everybody did get the Ouai hair mask, for example.

So the items I got (circling around clockwise from the left): Amore Pacific CC cushion compact, in two different colors; Tory Burch Love Relentlessly perfume sample; Tarte Frxxxtion Stick, which is an exfoliating cleanser in a stick; the Ouai treatment mask; Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey; and Youth for the People "age prevention" moisturizer, which is full of antioxidants. (I didn't copy the whole name out for that one - it was long and it sounded rather like a salad, with kale and spinach, etc.)

Saint George

This is A England Saint George:

It's a dark teal holo - very pretty and I can't say I have anything else like it. This is not one of my very newest group of polishes; I just realized that I hadn't ever posted the "bottle and wheel" picture for this one. I did talk about it a bit before, though - here's a manicure picture and here's the entry about the order it came in last month.

It's still a current polish. Apparently you still can't ship nail polish overseas from the UK, but here is a "where to buy" guide for A England.

(I'm still feeling guilty about buying too much polish lately, and looking at that Live Love Polish order again doesn't help any. I told Rob not to buy me anything for Valentine's Day as a sort of penance - I'd rather have polish than flowers, anyway.)

Morgan Taylor

I went on a little tear of buying stuff that I really don't need (which, when it comes to nail polish, is basically all of it, these days, unless I can convince myself it's something I really don't already have). Here's the first installment, Beauty and the Beast polishes from Morgan Taylor, plus an extra polish that was marked down:

The single one is Royal Treatment, and you can see the names of the other two on the packaging, but for the record they're The Last Petal and Be Our Guest (the latter of which resulted in another B&tB earworm, I'd already had the title song stuck in my head for days).

I got these from Loxa Beauty - it was the first time I'd purchased anything from them, and the first Morgan Taylor polishes I'd had, as well. First I was looking at the set of minis, but all of this collection except the two above are very pale pastels and I knew I wouldn't wear those. This duo was the only one with two colors that I thought I would wear. (It was #1, here's #2 and #3 for comparison.) Added: I forgot to mention that the mini set did have a top-coat thing called Enchanted Patina, which "transforms any gel polish or nail lacquer, giving it a beautifully bronzed antique appearance." I usually love top-coat things but I have a million of those, too, which is why I passed it up. If it really makes things look bronze and antique, that actually doesn't sound quite like anything I have, but unless I see some evidence that it really does something different, color me unconvinced.

(I'll have wheel swatches to come later, but I'm pretty sure The Last Petal is the one I'm going to fall in love with.)

Jem

Here's Zoya Jem, which for some reason I missed in the first round of these swatch posts last summer:

Zoya describes it as "a dark, red-toned purple with subtle gold and fuschia flecks. A bold, vampy shade that has just the right amount of sparkle!" And I think that description is pretty much spot-on.

It's one of the earlier Zoyas I bought, I think, Jem came out in fall 2011 (in the Mirrors collection) and my records say I bought it in 2012. I remember people really going on about how wonderful it was, and I think my records are probably right in that I didn't buy it right away. (When I say "my records" I mostly mean my spreadsheet, which I didn't start until later, I'm pretty sure. The further back you go the more I was guessing, but it's really 2010 and before where it's shakiest.) Anyway, once I finally bought it I fully agreed with the chorus that it's awesome. It's dark enough that you can't always see that underlying purple, though - for example, I found this post from 2012 where I refer to it as a burgundy. (Which isn't all that far off, actually.)

Orchid Of The Year

This is Lynnderella Orchid Of The Year:

This was my favorite polish of 2014 - that was also the year that orchid was the Pantone Color of the Year, thus the name. (Technically Pantone called it "Radiant Orchid" - which I came to think just meant it was a brighter orchid and not a pastel one.) I forget to wear this enough, but it's really gorgeous - as you can see above, it's almost the same color as Aurora (which is the one two spaces above it on the wheel), but OotY is full of a glitter mix - all the same color, more or less, but various sizes and shapes, and there's also scattered holo glitter as well. I put this on my thumbnail on top of The Necromancer the other day, and I even fished some big flower-shaped glitter pieces out of the bottle, which I don't even remember realizing were there before.

Necromancer is darker, but blends really well.

This was the first Lynnderella I ever bought - and, I think, still the only one that I've bought directly from her. I poked around just now and was reading blog posts about all the "Lynnderella drama" that happened back around 2012, but I didn't start buying indies until well after all that had happened and so I don't really feel qualified to have an opinion about it one way or the other. I've had nothing but good experiences with her polishes, though. And this one doesn't seem to be available now, anyway.

Aurora

Here is Zoya Aurora:

I feel like everybody already knows about Aurora so I don't need to talk about it. But is that really true? Probably not. It came out in 2012 (I'm pretty sure of that, because Scrangie said so) but I didn't get around to buying it until a year or so ago, I guess it was in late 2015. I may talk further about that collection further down, because it's a notable one, but let's just say now that this was part of Zoya's first release of holos. Here's Zoya's description: "a full coverage, medium sugarplum purple flecked with a high concentration of micro fine diamond holographic glitter." Pretty straightforward, except that if I didn't have this picture in front of me to look at, I would not be at all sure what color "sugarplum" was. (Plums are sort of a darker version of this color, so I guess taken literally, a sugared plum might look something like this. But I really only think of sugarplums in the context of Sugarplum Fairies and the like so I don't normally think of it in the literal sense at all. Your mileage may vary.) Anyway, if you look at people's list of favorite Zoya polishes, this polish appears a lot, which is what drove me to finally buy it. And I do really like it, even though I own so many red-violets it's getting really ridiculous.

This collection was Ornate, the holiday collection from 2012. It had the three holos plus Ziv and Logan, both super-popular colors, and a bar glitter named Electra that nobody much remembers any more. (I'm pretty sure that all of those except Electra are still available, although I didn't go one by one and check. Bar glitters just get no love - and that includes from me.)

The funny thing is that I think at the time, honestly, Aurora got talked about the least, of the three holos. The one I bought first was Blaze, but the one everybody talked about was Storm. (And I ended up giving away Blaze, not because I didn't like it, but because I was aware that I'd never got around to wearing it much, and somebody I knew happened to mention it later and I said, "Oh I have that!" and I found it and gave it to her.) Ziv, the gold metallic, has dupes but it's still the first polish people mention when you talk about gold polishes, most of the time. Logan is a pretty green microglitter and I'm pretty sure it's sold well over the years. (Ooh, look, there's one of Polishaholic's comparison posts for the holiday 2012 collections.)

I started to contradict myself and say that Scrangie did actually talk about Aurora first, which she did, but if you look at the order, she apparently was going alphabetically. Aurora first, Ziv last.)

I only own the two holo glitters - well, one, now - out of this collection. I bought an L.A. Girl dupe of Storm, later (I think it's Black Illusion) and I have China Glaze's dupe of Ziv from 2013, Mingle With Kringle. It's very pretty but it stains so I rarely wear it. - Does Ziv stain? If so I've never heard anybody say so that I can remember. I haven't felt in need of a gold polish enough to bother to buy another one. And Logan's really pretty but I have too many things similar to it.

(My goodness, and I thought I didn't have anything to say about this polish.)

For the record, here's my original post about this one. It was with Orchid Of The Year, there, and I've reswatched that as well. It'll be up soon.

The Necromancer (swatch + NOTD)

This is Femme Fatale The Necromancer:

This is my first Femme Fatale polish. I've known of their existence for at least a couple of years, I think, but they're Australian and so they've mostly been hard to get your hands on here in the US. But now Live Love Polish has a selection of their polishes and I've gotten the impression they're selling really well. I don't pay $13.50 for a polish all that often but this one looked interesting and I decided to give it a go. Their description:

The Necromancer is a magenta jelly polish with small red holographic hexes, iridescent red flakes, and blue shimmer.

So there's a lot going on there - which if you know me, you know is something I do really like. And I wore it and well, I do really like it. I did matte it down, though, I have to say. Although it was really pretty the normal way as well, I was tempted. (Closer to Valentine's Day I'm probably more likely to give in to the full-on glitter.)

As usual, very imperfect work. However, thanks to that, on my ring finger you can see the layers especially well. (I think this was three coats, with Superfood underneath and Matte Me Crazy on top.)

Wave g'bye to Formula X

I saw somebody say (probably on YouTube, because I watched a bunch of semi-random nail videos last night) that Sephora was closing out Formula X. I remember thinking back before Christmas that a lot of stuff seemed to be marked down, but I never remembered to check back in January and see what was going on, and now there's not much left. However, one of the few things that is left is a polish I really liked, and so I thought I'd mention it while it was still there.

It's Ignite:

I have a mini of it that I got from Ipsy, and I remember saying, "Oh gee, another red," but this is a really awesome red, and now that it's $5 I decided I ought to finally get myself a backup. I've said it before: almost every Formula X I have I bought marked down. They're perfectly good polishes, but they've just never quite been $12.50 worth of extraordinary. However, this one... I'm not even sure what's so magical about it, but something is. It's a little darker than your average red and I think maybe it's got a little pearlescence to it or something. Beauty Geeks likes it too.

There's another, darker red, and maybe a glitter and a couple of nail-care items - like I said, not much left, at least on the website. Maybe some stores have more, I don't know. And I wonder if they're going to have another, different house brand - maybe go all in on Sephora Collection, which they've never really done - or if they're just going to sell other people's polish now.

Flake Your Booty

This is Painted Polish Flake Your Booty (over WnW Black Creme, on the wheel):

This is the only true blue flakie I've ever seen, and you're not likely to be able to get your hands on it, sorry. I'm not an expert on nail-polish ingredients, but as I understand it, old-school flakies like this one are made of small, very thin bits of translucent stuff (I think it's Mylar, or something similar) and for some reason the blue version seems to be much more rare. This was one of those LE polishes that disappeared really, really fast, and so this is probably a true HTF polish - I don't really have many of those.

Here's Painted Polish's website - where I'm pretty sure you will not find it - and here's Simply Nailogical waxing rhapsodic about it.

(This was also in my 2015 favorites.)