u/GremlinSquishFace47

I’ve had this one sitting around, waiting for its day to come, for quite a long time. I think I waited so long because I’ve read that a lot of people found it disappointing and boring. I also recently read that there was a bad batch at some point, a while back, which must’ve been before I had purchased it.

I’m so addicted to magnetics at this point, but this weekend I wanted a nice easy mani, as well as getting to one of my untrieds. I decided to follow advice I’ve picked up and put a coat of Lost Polaroids down first to enhance the subtle pink shimmer.

I know we say it a lot, but I am incapable of getting a photograph of what I’m seeing — the mani is twinkling with superfine sparkles throughout, and I definitely see the pink shimmer over the pretty blue base. Right now I’m sitting in a very dimly lit room, just a little late afternoon sun coming through the black curtains, and there is a warm pink glowy sheen on the nails. In direct sun it’s very sparkly in a subtle way. I’m sure that the pink creme base coat probably had a hand in enhancing the pink shimmer, but I don’t suspect that I got one of the potential bad batches that are out there.

1x Hardcore base, 1x Lost Polaroids, 1x Mercury’s Tears, 1x Sally Hansen red bottle qdtc

Overall I really like it. I guess it’s not one of my top choices, in such a vast catalog, but it sure was quick & easy to use one coat of creme and one coat of shimmer to create a sparkly shimmery mani. 😊

Some photos taken outdoors with the late afternoon sun behind me, two photos taken indoors in a dim room near a window with minimal indirect natural light (the sun is on the other side of the building). This mani looks better in-person than what I was able to get with my ancient phone camera, which is so frustrating because I could see the pink shimmer and sparkles, but not capture them.

I have very fair skinned, cool with pink undertones. My MC collection is pretty large at this point (I went hard in that first year, and have told myself I’m slowing way down, but I’ve picked up plenty via destashes and rewards since the last sale 😣). So I’m really trying to make a reasonable, small, finely curated sales cart. I’m also thinking of waiting to see if any rewards change over the course of the sale, because I have points but also own the current rewards. If something on my list sells out, it won’t be heartbreaking, as I’m drowning in polish already lol.

Onto the cart— I’ve trimmed it down this far, marking each with where I think they stand in priority. I know some are sold out, but maybe they’ll be restocked.

The final ones that I trimmed, and are not in the photos, were: 1. Quicksand’s Embrace (I love pale pink, magnetics, and can get behind a subtle polish, but I don’t really *need* it), 2. The Trouble With Immortality (idk. It looks so pretty and shimmery when I see you guys wear it, esp as an accent, but in general I don’t think this color is meant for me), 3. Pearl Clutcher (I’ve gone back and forth on this one, but I already have some white/white-ish polishes and while the shimmer looks gorgeous, I don’t think I need more white), 4. Some cremes that were on my list in hopes I spot them as a reward someday, but I don’t think I really need to buy them (From the Ashes being the most tempting one, but I’ll resist, Midnight Drive, and A Doll’s House I would like but only as a reward).

🥇: Poisonberry is a must have if it restocks. I’m quite sold on Port 6666. I’m 90% sold on Black Widow but should probably search for more irl photos for confirmation.

🥈: Death’s Trumpet, I love both color states, and while I generally avoid the sun I do have to be in the sun sometimes lol, so I’d get to see the transition. But it would mostly be in the non-UV state, so I want to make sure it’s lovable enough as is. Or do I own enough similar pink shimmers? (yes) I think the thermal gimick is what’s getting me here. The Avatar State has an amazing glow. I own Green Eyed Monster and love the glow, but don’t wear it much as I’m not the hugest fan of white polish. But Avatar’s blue shimmer is preferable to GEM’s green shimmer, so maybe?

🥉: Lovebomb I know is a divisive color, but my gut tells me it would work for me. Maybe I should bump this up to a silver medal. I’m just not sure I need it need it. Sugar and Spice is cool, but I have Foxfire and don’t even use it that often. Would I really be using this, or am I tempted because I missed out on all the PPG colors, and this is supposedly limited edition? Is this just fomo at play? And I probably shouldn’t have even included The Doppelgänger in this post, but damn I cannot shake wanting this polish. I won’t buy it simply because I have too many thermals to use up before they die, I’m limited to wearing thermals in warm months (icy hands!), and I alresdy have Dark Omens which is, imo, inferior but too similar to justify both. Sigh Doppelgänger might someday be the “fuck it I’m pretty close to free shipping” impulse buy lol, but I know I do not need to buy it.

I’ve combed through the site a few times and I don’t think I missed anything. This is it, this is what I’m choosing from. Please let any and all opinions be known, especially if something surprised you in any way, positively or negatively. I don’t have a set number of colors to limit myself to, but I guess if I hit free shipping I’ll stop there and not keep climbing (which wouldn’t even be very many, like 4 bottles?).

Also, as a side note, I’m so embarrassed that I’ve been misspelling Ghosts of Hecate this whole time and no one has corrected me lol. I now have to train my autocorrect to get it right, because it is not Ghosts of Hactate, as I thought for some reason. 🙃

I’ve started dipping my toes into the indie world, but Mooncat remains my steady love. Even when I’m enjoying other brands, there is often some MC representation layered under and/or over those new polishes.

The main polish here is Anlac’s Fuyu, a delicate pale pink magnetic with blue shimmer. I absolutely adore it and have many MC colors that could serve as a base to help with opacity, as sheer pale pink with blue shimmer is my comfort zone. 😊 I also knew I wanted to conserve as much of the bottle as possible. I know some people think MC’s 12mL bottles are too small for the price, but Anlac’s are a tiny 10mL bottle, so I want to delay the drop of that fill line by adding an unobtrusive base color first!

Original mani: 1x MC Hardcore base, 1x MC The Living Doll, 2x Anlac Fuyu (cat eye ring finger, glass bead on rest), 1x Sally Hansen qdtc red bottle. Added this morning: 1x MC Moonfairy on index fingers, 1x MC Speed Demon.

I noticed a small chip on one index finger this morning but I’m not quite ready to remove Fuyu yet. As much as I’d enjoy painting my nails this weekend (i look forward to that me time every week!), the mani is still pretty fresh and I’m really loving it. So I tried a thin coat of Moonfairy on top to obscure the chip and wow, Moonfairy compliments Fuyu so perfectly! And The Living Doll was a perfect base color, though there are plenty of other options that I’m sure would’ve worked equally well. I usually like to see a new polish solo on first wear, but I’d really like to use as few coats of this as possible lol.

What an absolutely perfectly sweet delicate pale pink shimmery magnetic this is.

The petite bottle size has me stressing, ngl, because I’m alresdy dreading the day this runs out. The bottle itself is beautiful and feels “classy,” but damn do I wish we could get at least 12mL. But this is fine dining. A very simple dish with just a few ingredients, presented on a tiny plate, everything delivered with impeccable execution. 🤌

The one thing that you cannot see in photos/videos is the blue shimmer. It’s not quite like the blue shimmer I’ve seen in alllll my other sheer pale pinks with blue shimmer (my comfort zone). It’s subtle, but there’s something electric to it when you catch a glimpse. It’s easiest to really see it distinctly when you’re up close, and from further away it’s not distinct but subtly adds flavor to the whole dynamic of this polish.

I’d read that this one is quite sheer, with some people using three coats, and I fear that fill line so I tried to find a base color that wouldn’t affect the final outcome. I settled on one coat of Mooncat’s The Living Doll, which in one coat is quite sheer, and is a very pale pink with blue shimmer. The one coat I used was sheer enough that I don’t think it had an effect on Fuyu’s color, it just helped a bit to build opacity.

Fuyu was super easy to work with, magnetized easily, and I haven’t noticed dispersal (esp the cat eye! That’s holding strong). Some of my fingers have three coats of Fuyu, some have two. I dinged my thumb, so that has three. The cat eye on my ring finger looked a little too sheer so I gave that one three. Index, middle, and pinky have two coats of Fuyu.

I’ll put some still shots in the comments, including a pic of my cute little Anlac collection and bonus pic of my somewhat recently adopted rescue kitty boy checking my work. We have a lot of fun at mani time. While I’m spinning the magnet, with all my pricey little bottles lined up, he tries to jump on the counter and I have to stretch my leg to try to block him while keeping the magnet going. He’s a big help. 😊

1x Mooncat Hardcore base, 1x Mooncat The Living Doll, 2-3x Anlac Fuyu, 1x Sally Hansen qdtc red bottle. (Fuyu in two coats except ring & thumb, which got three)

Two video clips, one shot outside in the late afternoon sun, one shot inside near a window with low indirect natural light

I’m really enjoying this sub as a newbie to the world of indies! If nothing else, I’ll forever be grateful for learning about Anlac and specifically Fuyu! 💕

The color is super pretty, certainly evokes ocean water vibes, and the polish is named accurately.

I know this one is notoriously difficult to magentize, and I was a little lazy in my approach, too. Lazy particles, lazy effort. Instead of using my neodymium bar I just stacked two MC wands together and rested my finger upon it. I’d read on here that cat eye suits this polish the best as the large amount of reflective glitter can look sloppy & sandy when used in glass bead or velvet styles (plus I highly doubt this is a contender for a glass bead anyway- I’d love to see if anyone has tried though!).

PP looks very pretty in regular lighting, but wow does it ✨ sparkle ✨ when hit with direct light! In photos the flash makes it look like bubbles (also very oceanic) but irl it’s sparkly glitter.

Oh and I struggled big time with this mani, not due to the polish, but due to my own idiocy lol… I wanted to try the new hack of using base coat before top coat in order to skip magnetizing the top coat. On my thumb, used base coat, went in to add a coat of Speed Demon and the whole thing just started melting and looking awful. Removed thumb polish to start over. Thought it was the extra base coat’s fault. Added Speed Demon to my painted index finger, and again it messed up the nail. What’s wrong with my SD? Put some on the back of my hand … why is it so oily?? 😑 omg I grabbed Nail Elixer. Not once, but twice I added oil to the top of my mani. How did I not realize this after the first nail?! 🤦‍♀️

I also smudged my index finger before it was dry so that one has an extra coat of polish. I think I prefer how that one looks, the green-blue base is deeper and it makes the glitter look a little less grainy in regular light. I didn’t really want to paint all my fingers with an extra coat, so in the future I’d probably just use a base creme first and two coats of PP.

I thought I didn’t need PP and didn’t try to buy it during the last round of DDs, but found it for a very reasonable price in a destash. I really like the color and can’t wait to see how this looks on a bright sunny day to see how it sparkles without my flashlight or camera flash. I don’t mind the less crisp cat eye, and I’m guessing that if I put in more effort with a neodymium bar it may sharpen it a bit. But even if this is the best cat eye possible, it’s still really pretty, and looks like vibrantly colored flowing water.

Oh and this one for sure needs extra top coat! I used Speed Demon yesterday (magnetized) and added a generous coat of Essie gel couture this morning (no magnet). Before adding the Essie it was quite textured and gritty, looked and felt pretty bad honestly, but that second layer of top coat fixed it.

1x Hardcore base, 2x Poseidon’s Prize (extra coat on index finger), 1x Speed Demon. 1x Essie gel couture top coat added next day.

Magnetized final coat of PP & top coat with free magnet wands (two stacked together), finger resting on top. Two photos taken indoors near a window, indirect natural light. Two photos taken with flash added.

One of my first indies, I picked this one up in a very reasonably priced destash bundle. I don’t need any more sheer pale pinks with blue shimmer, but I am clearly compelled to try them all, no matter how many times I dupe myself.

I’ll post in order of what I think is the best conditions for this polish (dim, cloudy) to less ideal (direct light, flash, bright conditions). Wings of Icarus *glows* in dim lighting and the pink intensifies. This seems to be the case with all my sheer pink shimmers, so I try to wear them when I see clouds in the forecast.

This one is especially sheer. I love to wear these colors left slightly intentionally sheer, but even after three coats it’s still quite sheer. And I did use primer first, so the mani took quite a while to fully set and I had to redo a few nails on my right hand.

The bottle is a petite 10ml. The polish was lovely to work with, and would probably be an ideal topper to add a little micro glitter and blue shimmer without altering the base polish’s color much at all.

This was a HHC polish from April 2024. Overall I enjoy it, as I do all of the pale pink shimmers, but it’s not one you need to pay an inflated price for because there’s so many dupes out there. I love my sheer pale pinks, but even compared to my others in this category it is the sheerest (which means needing more coats from an already small bottle).

1x Mooncat Hardcore base, 1x Mooncat Getting Even primer, 3x Femme Fatale Wings of Icarus, 1x Mooncat Speed Demon

The wing sticker on the images is so I don’t confuse these pics with my all-time favorite polish, Mooncat’s Moonrise. This one doesn’t quite meet the high bar set by Moonrise, but I will still get good use out of it. 😊

I saw someone else post this combo somewhere and I loved how it looked on them. Mine did not hit the same at all. I’m thinking I needed a much thinner coat of Moonjelly, or maybe I just don’t need this combo at all in my life! I didn’t love TAWGM the one time I wore it (it was aight, but not love). Of course, I really liked how TAWGM looked this time and I probably should’ve just left it alone. But I wanted to experiment and here we are. I took it off within 48 hours and am currently wearing a non-MC color.

I’ll come back to you someday soon, TAWGM! I saw more potential in you this week, and I should’ve just left you alone.

Just sharing this in case you were ever wondering about the combo, and to add to our digital database of colors & combos. I do like the pink rainbow of flakes in Moonjelly, but it lightened & dulled TAWGM too much for my taste. I’ll need to try Moonjelly solo sometime soon too.

My nails are in an awkward stage between different lengths and trying to get back to my old shape. I had the big idea to change my shape recently and instantly broke three nails at work lol.. turns out the old shape was what was holding things together. I need to learn not to push things that are working! The old shape was working. TAWGM was working. Just let it be. 😌

1x Hardcore base, 2x To All Who Ghosted Me, 1x Moonjelly, 1x Speed Demon

I changed my mani an unusual number of times this week. Diving harder into my self-care hobby, looking for some comfort and alone time in the colors and textures, as well as trying so hard to find the RIGHT mani for a really difficult time. It’s such a small, seemingly meaningless detail .. what color is on my nails.. but I’ll be burying my best friend, the most significant person I’ve ever known, this week and it’s amazing just how WRONG some of the other manis felt. No way could I have shown up with *those* nails for our final farewell.

Mother Bog Witch feels just right. Dark but not black. Shimmery and deep, but not glitzy and upbeat. It’s got the depth I was looking for. Dark enough but not a “sad” color. It didn’t come out perfectly but it’s staying (left hand especially is a little off; some of the magnetic particles settled into the tips for some reason, which has never happened before, but it shall remain).

I’ve been a Mooncat addict for a while now and am just starting to explore other indies, almost entirely due to what’s happening in fine particle magnetics right now. This may be my favorite of the few I’ve tried so far. I’m really loving the purple base color, and the formula was delightful to work with.

1x Mooncat hardcore base, 2x BKL Mother Bog Witch, 1x Essie gel couture top coat - magnetized glass bead style — video taken indoors near a window on a cloudy gray morning

Please excuse any errant cat hairs I may have missed. There is cat hair everywhere and it’s a neverending battle to keep my hands truly hair-free lol, thanks to my big floofy clunky idiot. 🐱

Has anyone else worn this yet? Of the new BKL’s I picked up, I’ve only tried The Water Remembers so far. I liked it quite a bit, but I *love* Mother Bog Witch.