Electro Candy plus Revlon Candy Twist

Felt it needed more blue shimmer.

Zoya Blair + LA Girl Rock Star Addict

The dim light does not do it justice. This combo is simply stunning.

Nfu-Oh 569 + Nfu-Oh 39

I think I have a new favorite combo.

Layers of laziness: L'Oreal Jet Set Confetti Girl's Night Out over Casey

At least I think it's Girl's Night Out. I can't remember which of the Confettis I snagged on eBay, and I think I misfiled the polish last night, because it's not back in my glitter drawer, although the Poshe is back with the topcoats, and I can't imagine bringing one bottle back to the polish station and not the other. This is what happens when I do my nails while watching TV, I tell you.

The Confettis fall into my Polish Regrets file, right near the top. I'm not sure what year they came out, though I expect it may've been while I was pregnant or in the year or two after my daughter was born, because those are the missing years for me in terms of polish. They're what I still think of as "new formula" Jet Sets, from the Shine line, with the nasty, awful, long, stiff, annoying brush and somewhat wonky application.

Please ignore my tipwear and focus on the green flash.

Flake glitter makes everything better

This is two coats over Sunday's Casey.

So pretty, so hard to track down! It's like having opals on your nails! And to think, these were available in drugstores during the short window when I wasn't polish shopping! It is enough to make a girl weep.

Layers for Humpday: Nfu-Oh 39 over Drinkin' My Blues Away

Drinkin' My Blues Away survived my Tuesday with nary a chip in sight, so rather than remove it, I added a layer of Nfu-Oh 39, an opalescent flake glitter in a clear base.

I'm not sure what I would do if it weren't for layering. I have the attention span of a crack-addled gnat and the "Ooo!! SHINY!!!" impulses of a magpie, which adds up to me changing my polish more often than is good for my cuticles. (Once, I went a whole work week wearing the same polish. I started freaking me out around day two, and I spent the rest of the week trying to get it to chip. Want a manicure to stay intact? Start looking for an excuse to remove it, and it will remain pristine for all eternity.)

Nfu-Oh's flake glitters are pretty much my favorite thing in the whole wide world for jazzing up an existing manicure. For starters, they cover exceptionally well: the picture on the left shows how flake-laden a single coat of this stuff is. (Ignore the appearance of bumps, which is a trick of the low light. The Nfu-Oh flake glitters are silky-smooth.)

Left: low light, Right: bright light.

The green flash of the flakes is almost identical to the green flash in the glass fleck glitter of the base color, which is hard to tell from my pictures. This range of Nfu-Ohs really does look just like opals on your nails, and make me wish I had the time and space to do a proper nail photography set up.

The flakes shift to an almost-indigo as you angle your hand. It's hard to capture against a blue background, but I expect it would look incredible against black.

Left: green glimmers, Right: the purple/indigo flash

Except for the stigmata-inducing drip off the brush stem, application with Nfu-Oh polishes is good. The brush is easy to handle, and decent-sized without being a mop. The formula is less gloppy than some of the Big 3 free polishes, though it does have an especially plastic smell.

Nfu-Oh polishes aren't cheap (they're $12.50 a bottle at the US distributer, fabuloustreet.com), but the flake glitters are the best I've ever tried, and at 17ml a bottle, they're 2ml larger than OPI or China Glaze, so for a high end polish, it's almost a bargain. (MAC polishes are around the same price, but come in dinky little 10ml bottles.)

Nfu-Oh 554 + Sally Hansen Grape Going

Because a lack of content makes me sad...

Nfu-Oh 554 + one layer Sally Hansen Grape Going

Grape Going's been driving me nuts since I got it: it's too sheer to get away with just one coat (or even just two), but the Insta-Dri polishes take forever to dry on me if I add additional coats (most of them are pigmented enough that this isn't a problem). As my Nfu-Oh 554 was too subdued for a Monday Morning Manicure (look, I'm going back to the office after two weeks on vacation, I need something eye-catching to keep me conscious), I thought I'd see if I could get approximate bottle color this way, and indeed! Success! The end result's slightly darker than Grape Going alone, but not so much that it bugs me.

Bonus: when I move my fingers just right, I'm seeing an awesome red flash in addition to the blue. Curious. (I see it if I angle the bottle, so it's not just a side effect of the layering.)