Hey Now, You’re an All Star

Just in case you needed reminding. 🙂

Multi-Chrome Bones

I’m participating in another nail art challenge over on Instagram, this time themed to seemingly everyone’s favourite holiday, Halloween.  This bonerrific manicure (c’mon, did you think I was going to leave a potential boner joke on the table, metaphorically speaking?) is in service of the first challenge prompt of “Spooky Skeleton.”

Speaking from a design perspective, skeletons are my least favourite Halloween decorating trope, and I’ve never really cared to paint them on my nails either (though this early design is way dope; I’d try anything in those super early days, and sometimes it didn’t even turn out that badly!)  But I do like bones (and boner jokes) and so I decided to do this simple, but rather striking, bone design, enhanced with four nifty, colour-shifting multi-chromes from Polish Me Silly (from index to pinkie, Obsession, Mystery, Dreamer and Paradise.)

Fish Flakes

Chromatic flakes, actually, in the form of ILNP’s fabulously fun Ferris Wheel, adorned with a couple of golden fish bone charms.  Lots of F-word punning going on around here today. 😉

Chrome Alone

Here’s a nifty, multi-look mani that makes the most of the polishes I used, four colour-shifting chromatics from Polish Me Silly.  And with thanks to that colour shiftiness and the tiniest tilt of your hand, this simple dotted nail art can look like three different manicures in one, perfect if you’re looking to maximize your manis, or even if you’re just really indecisive. 😉

Here I used four Polish Me Silly chromatics, two duo-chromes (Holy Shift, first, and Guilty Pleasure, third) and two multi-chromes (Dreamer, second, and Paradise, fourth.)  In the polished nomenclature, chromatic refers to the lacquer’s finish, in this case a liquid metal-type paint job to rival the flashiest of cars in the Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (actually, I think Twink’s Incredible Hulk car is the exact same shade of green as Dreamer, and shut up, I KNOW I know too much about that stupid movie, but I can’t help myself, it’s awful/terrible and Han is way hot and I can’t. stop. watching…except it actually features real stunt driving, instead of Vin Diesel smirk-driving on, like, submarines in the Arctic, and it’s pretty badass.  I think this comparison may have gotten away from me a bit.)

Duo-chrome means the polish shifts back and forth between two colours, and multi-chrome means it shifts between three or four.  This just means that depending on the lighting conditions or the angle of your hand, your nail art can look like a few different manis in one.  Quite economical of time and polish, yes, but just a fun look to play around with all the same.

Northern Lights

Rainbow multi-chrome styles.

I’ve actually never seen the Northern Lights.  Supposedly they’re periodically visible in my neck of the eastern Ontario woods (literally; the Gatineau Hills are staring at me from directly across the Ottawa River) but never have I ever.  I’ve also visited the way-up-north of the Great White North, Nunavut, home to little else but mile upon mile kilometer upon kilometer of endless sky, and still no Northern Lights.  I also didn’t see a polar bear, but for that I’m more grateful than disappointed (not for lack of hype; when I stepped off the plane in Iqaluit, the very first thing I saw was a poster advising me to please NOT feed the polar bears.  Hey man, done and done – you don’t need to tell me twice!)

So, one of these days.  But for now, nails. 🙂

Glowflakes

Supposed to be lots of this stuff coming down over the next couple of days.  Snow, that is, of the regular, old fashioned variety, not multi-chromatic flakes.  Which I would think would be incredibly dangerous, if only because a bunch of Instagramming nimrods would immediately get out of their cars and begin vlogging the #unicorndiscosnowstorm from the middle of the road.  I say that as someone who would completely stop to take photos of such an event (I did take 1,779 photos over six days at Disney.)  I just like to think I’d pull over to the side of the road first. 🙂

As for the technical details, these nails were brought to you by a basic black creme topped with a long since discontinued glitter, Ozotic’s inelegantly named 528, to which I added some free-handed snowflakes in Polish Me Silly’s Paradise, a purple-to-teal-to-blue-to-green multi-chrome that gives everything it touches #thatunicornlife.

Leafly

Here’s a pretty, autumn-appropriate polish to add a bit of subtle sparkle to your seasonal soirees, ILNP’s chromatic flakie, The Road to Awe (as in “Oooo!” not “Awww!”)  Despite being released two or three years ago, this polish is still available on ILNP’s site, a testament to its beauty and popularity – it’s just a gorgeous polish.  And a fantastic pick for the Fall, too, with its colour-shifting chromatic flakies in a range of plummy purples, bronzey oranges and leafy yellows (here over a basic black creme, always the best base on which to show off any of these kind of chromatic polishes; classic bedfellows, if you will.)  I also love the smattering of hyacinth blue flakes – they’re the perfect hit of neon to liven up The Road to Awe’s crunchy, glittery “leaves.”  Perfect and perfectly pretty.

Celebration Nails

And what are we celebrating on this fine April Fool’s Day?  My impending fourth decade of existence, in a couple weeks’ time, and that’s unfortunately no joke.  Nobody likes getting older, except maybe six-year-olds. But tonight I’m going out with friends to celebrate in advance like adults, with roast beast by candlelight and something brown and bracing in a rocks glass.  Seeing as I need a pretty manicure for that (or would merely like one) I think these eye-catching, colour-shifting nails will suffice!

Shake Ya Tailfeather

Inspiration for this manicure originated with a beautiful raven I saw preening in the sun the other morning, her glossy feathers throwing off gorgeous, oil slick rainbows.  Then I got my hands on my Polish Me Silly multi-chromes (colour-shifting metallic polishes that look like the coolest paint job on a car you’ve ever seen) and suddenly these nails were less raven and more parrot, but still one of the more beautiful manicures I’ve done this year. So pretty.

I haven’t purchased many nail polishes this year, and those that I have bought have primarily been replacements (on my fourth bottle of OPI’s My Vampire is Buff, for instance.)  But early this year I splashed out on a whole pile of Polish Me Silly multi-chromes, and they’ve since proven themselves, in manicure after manicure, to be some of the greatest polishes I’ve ever owned.  A very good nail art investment.

For these feathered nails, I used three of Polish Me Silly’s multi-chromes over a black creme base, purple-to-turquoise Paradise, jade green-to-indigo Dreamer and golden green-to-plum Mystery.  Multi-chromes tend to look like about four different polishes at once, an effect that’s really amplified by pairing them with a simple black polish.  Then all you have to do is learn to stop staring at your pretty, pretty hands!

Green-Eyed Monster

Although…with the colour-shifting base polish I chose here (Polish Me Silly’s jade green multi-chrome, Dreamer) this manicure looks less like evil peepers and more like Pascal the chameleon from the animated Disney musical, Tangled.  I don’t think Pascal would ever look so evil, though (unless he was in the midst of delivering yet another tongue-based wet willy to Flynn Rider, that is!)