Friday Night Floral (OMD3)

With these shimmery floral nails satisfying day nine’s theme in the Oh Mon Dieu Nail Art Challenge, I’m all caught up but for one prompt, yesterday’s call for patterns. I wanted to keep these nails simple, so I went with a tiny, dotted floral design and let the polishes I used here, Mentality’s blue shimmer-infused pink, Bash, and Smitten Polish’s purple (and blue and green and sometimes red) colour-shifter, You Saucy Minx, do all the heavy lifting. I love how the shimmer in both these polishes makes them look as though they glow from within, and depending on the angle of your hand and the quality of the light, like four different polishes at once. Cheers to keeping the rest of your Friday night fun and flowery, fingernail friends. 🙂

The A-Team

Without getting too nihilistic on you, friends who come here to see nail art but instead get lured into 1,200-word diatribes on my cats and/or The Lost Boys, 2014 was a bad, bad year. To be sure, there were some lovely, wonderful moments – new babies! an unexpectedly fun road trip! the discovery of Misfits! – but for my family at least, and a distressingly large number of my friends and acquaintances, 2014 was a year defined by loss, grief and hardships great and small. I won’t be sorry to see it go.

Okay, so 2014 sucked. But do you know what didn’t? These nail polishes! Which seems like the ultimate in ridiculous non sequiturs, but really, in a year that’s been as unpleasant as the past one, why shouldn’t we take a moment to appreciate the things that gave us a bit of joy, even those as immaterially material as silly old nail polish? No good reason that I can think of! And so I present to you this photo gallery of the polishes that rocked my world this year, a motley assortment of holos and flakies and industrially chunky glitters that prove that good things – and sometimes good, don’t-hate-the-world feelings – truly do come in small packages. 😉

Sitting atop the heap and not included in this gallery is my pick for polish of the year, Candy Lacquer’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink glitter, Candy Cane Fiesta. I’ve expounded on its loveliness – some may say at length! – so I’ll say no more before it develops a swelled head.

The following nine are presented in no particular order or ranking – they’re across-the-board beautiful and so well made, I’ve found uses for them in multiple manis this year, and will continue to well into the new year. Here’s to the little lacquered things!

1. Polish Me Silly’s pink, white and blue glitter topper, Mr. Bubble.

2. Smitten Polish’s red shimmer-infused purple jelly, You Saucy Minx.

3. KB Shimmer’s Hawaiian Punch-in-a-bottle, Belle of the Mall.

4. KB Shimmer’s grass green glitter jelly, Get Clover It.

5. Orly’s silver holo of the year, Mirrorball.

6. Dance Legend’s cobalt blue jelly flakie, Sun Still Sleeps.

7. Candy Lacquer’s super fruity matte glitter, Citrus Smoothie.

8. KB Shimmer’s Frozen-in-a-bottle, Snow Much Fun.

9. Polish Me Silly’s pink-to-gold-to-green chrome flakie, Stop Flaking on Me.

Polish Me Silly’s polishes are available through their Etsy shop. You can find KB Shimmer’s wares through their own site if you’re an American customer, or through Harlow & Co.’s site if you’re an international customer. Smitten Polish’s goods are available through their Big Cartel site, as are Candy Lacquer‘s. Orly polishes are available at brick and mortar Sally Beauty Supply shops, as well as their website. Finally, Dance Legend polishes are best and most reliably acquired through international stocklist Llarowe’s website.

You’re a Chameleon, You Saucy Minx

Smitten Polish scored a real hat trick with this third fantastic polish I received in a recent order of nail mail. This is You Saucy Minx, a royal blue/violet/blueberry/periwinkle jelly polish shot through with red-to-green colour shifting shimmer. It’s quite saucy indeed, looking like about six totally different polishes depending on the lighting or the angle of your hand. It’s a multichrome as well, with the shimmer adding gorgeous depth in lower lighting and an almost holo-like rainbow effect in the direct sun. That combined with the colour shifting shimmer makes for a constantly changing nail polish animal that really does look like about four slightly, but clearly, different polishes. More bang for your buck, which you’ll probably just turn around and give right back to Smitten when you learn that You Saucy Minx has a turquoise sister!