Eight Years to Hold You

This world is just THE most random place sometimes, innit? I was sitting here trying to think up a suitably pithy title for a post about this blog’s eighth birthday when the phrase “Eight arms to hold you” popped into my head. I know that as the title of a Veruca Salt album from the late ’90s, but just in case I was wrong (I rarely am about grunge era music) I thought I’d run it through the old Wiki machine all the same. That’s where I learned that Eight Arms to Hold You was actually the working title of the Beatles’ 1965 film Help, and in addition to being the title of a pretty dynamite Veruca Salt album, it’s also the name of a song on the soundtrack to one of my favourite movies of all time, The Goonies.

So in keeping with the theme of complete happen randomstance and the number 8, I ditched the anniversary nails I had planned (eh, you know, pink, glittery and invoking various sweet foodstuffs) and did a simple mani using Enchanted Polish’s Octopus’s Garden (jeepers, what was up with the Beatles and cephalopods?) a lacquer that, as one of the first ones to hit my collection, is also celebrating its eighth birthday. Cheers to you, tiny everlasting bottle of noxious chemicals!

And cheers to you, Finger Candy, for limping along through these last two years of massive change. I know I’ve neglected you terribly, old friend, but I hope that one day soon we’ll be seeing more of one another.

One Enchanted Dragon

Can’t call these multichromatic spheres scales, although this combination of three dotted-on, colour-changing polishes certainly looks like dragon hide, does it not? Or at least what I’ve come to assume dragon skin might look like per the Disney Corporation.

Semantics aside, this simple, random dotticure is a great example of using what you’ve got, namely colour-shifting chromatic polishes that bend and flash with each flutter of your fingertips. Done in, say, creme polishes, this would be a cute manicure, although maybe nothing too special. But painted in a trio of purple-to-blue-to-green-leaning multichromes (Enchanted Polish’s blue Across the Universe, purple Octopus’s Garden and teal Magical Mystery Tour) that all share a bit of colour overlap, this mani morphs into something almost living, like the scales of a fantastical beast, or perhaps an elaborately-hued amphibian of some sort. I’m open to suggestions!

Magical Mystery Polish

Hey, would you look at that – it’s Friday evening already. Huh, that kind of crept up on me! So in honour of the weekend that has appeared seemingly out of nowhere, let’s gaze upon this drop dead gorgeous polish I received today in a bit of pre-birthday nail mail, Enchanted Polish’s Magical Mystery Tour. This holographic multichrome stunner from Enchanted’s Beatles-themed collection is a polish I have passed by time and time again come the mythical “Enchanted hour” (those incredibly rare, unicorn sighting-like moments when you actually manage to snag one of these polishes in a restock; Magical Mystery indeed, the mystery being how to get your hands on one.) I’ve always found other uses for my Enchanted mad money (Octopus’s Garden and Across the Universe, two other polishes from the Beatles collection, are two of my favourite and most-used lacquers, so it’s not money ill spent.) But when Magical Mystery Tour recently appeared in a Nail Polish Canada restock, I thought it high time I finally snap up a bottle.

And I am so very glad I did, because it is sublime! What a gorgeous colour (or should I say colours, plural?) The shift in this multichrome is bonkers, bouncing all over the place from dark teal and turquoise to indigo and fuchsia, with the whole stunning rainbow tempered by a dainty dash of holo shimmer. It is so beyond pretty. I hope that’s a useful description for you, by the way – “beyond.” But Magical Mystery Tour really stands head and shoulders above even Octopus’s Garden and Across the Universe; it’s that lovely. So glad I finally added this beauty to my stash. Magical Mystery solved!

Holo Hell

These nails, a stained glass design that I thought would look extra pretty done in a handful of megawatt holographic polishes, are the first nails I’ve ever done that have proven to be well nigh unphotographable. I took well over 100 photos of these nails in the sun, out of the sun, with a light source behind me, beside me, above me, indoors, outdoors and even out in the hall where I thought the bright overhead halogens would allow my camera to focus for two-tenths of a second. NO DICE.

So I regret to say that despite taking quite a while to complete and despite using some of my rarer, more expensive polishes and despite looking quite good in person, these nails, my photographic hokey pokey notwithstanding, don’t look like all that. Still, there’s something fun about a stained glass design that actually shifts colour depending on the light, so here I’ve highlighted two of the photos that actually did turn out so we can all bask in the pretty scattered holo of Enchanted Polish’s blue Across the Universe and purple Octopus’s Garden making nice with Polish Me Silly’s plummy Guilty Pleasure.

Nail Porn

Sure, it’s an overused phrase, but is there any more apt description for the sort of D3-induced craziness that goes on when a polish maker releases a new line and we all want it, want it now, now, NOW!!? Not that I don’t do it myself, but the sort of rhapsodizing that goes on over the latest hard-to-find holo or Aussie-imported glitter polish is *just* this side of lustful panting.

But sometimes you have a very good reason for staring in dumbfounded delight at your hands, a little polish-on-polish action dancing in your head, because the polish you’re wearing is just so damn pretty. Like this beauty I received last week, Enchanted Polish’s Octopus’s Garden.

So what’s next? Well, you take a picture of it, and then maybe 20 more after that, all while you stand in the sun or out of the sun or under a tree or with your hand shoved in a little box, and then, as you contort your hand and fingers into positions even the most flexible of yogis would shudder at, you snap the photo, thinking such absurdly rapturous thoughts as, “That linear holo is TO DIE FOR. Just gorgeous…wait, what’s a linear holo?” Then you put it on your blog so others can share in your pervy porniness, which you know they will because you do it, too!

Hey, I guess we all get our jollies where we can. Some jollies are just sparklier than others. 😉

Disney Girl Challenge: Esmerelda

The Hunchback of Notre Dame gets my vote for best score in an animated Disney movie, but holy hell (sometimes literally) is it one bleak, BLEAK examination of race relations and the danger of unchecked power, all of it wrapped in a bow of heavy handed religious sermonizing.

But sassy, singing stone gargoyles! And, if I remember correctly, Demi Moore’s vocal turn as Esmerelda, gypsy apple of Quasimodo’s eye. Esmerelda has a great dress – all the better for enticing Frollo, one of the most fearsome Disney villians because he’s real world evil – elements of which I attempted to capture here, with a little help from a new favourite polish, Enchanted Polish’s holographic Octopus’s Garden.