Orly Cosmic FX layering experiments, or, She Wore Nails of Many Colours

There have been many blog posts about the Orly Cosmic FX nail polishes and their MAC Venomous Villains dupes. Posts from applications pros, with awesome cameras, managing to capture all (or at least most) of the multichrome wonder of them.

So when mine came through and I swatched them, I thought I'd do something different and use different colours under them. They're sheer so perfect for layering. And the results were pretty awesome. I feel like for 3 polishes I'm actually getting so many more! My experiments have also informed me that the FX polishes are also amazing layered with each other. Please excuse the terrible application and smudges, I wasn't going to post them but the results were too cool not to. Check out my findings below:

Thumb - pinky: Orly Space Cadet over Orly Galaxy Girl, Orly Galaxy Girl over OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, Orly Out of This World over OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, Orly Galaxy Girl over Boots No. 7 Totally Teal, Orly Out of This World over Chanel Black Satin

Pinky - thumb: Orly Space Cadet over OPI Parlez Vous OPI?, Orly Space Cadet over Boots No. 7 Totally Teal, Orly Space Cadet over Chanel Black Satin, Orly Space Cadet over Orly Out of This World, Orly Out of This World over Orly Space Cadet

My favourites of the bunch?

Orly Galaxy Girl over No. 7 Totally Teal: this totally transformed GG. I do love it on its own, but layered like this it has so much more depth and intrigue. The photo doesn't do it justice, it looks like a plain dark teal shimmer but if you look at the very edge of the nail you can see the glint of plum. That's how the whole nail looks - teal shimmer suspended murkily in plum (whereas in GG on its on the teal shimmer sits on top of the plum, if you see what I mean?) And it changes a lot in different lighting - utterly fascinating.

Orly Space Cadet over Parlez Vous OPI?: using a greyed purple base makes the mauve and pink tones of Space Cadet ping, and the warm pink/ cool purple duochrome is very pretty, somewhat ethereal.

Orly Space Cadet over Orly Galaxy Girl: woah this is a sparklefest! I think the sheerness of the polishes is really a positive for me because I love to layer. Here Galaxy Girl's teal and blue sparkles shine through the warm pink, gold and copper sparkles of Space Cadet. It looks like a sunset on a nail. If the sunset was on Jupiter.

If you own any of the MAC or Orly polishes (and especially if you're a bit peeved at their sheerness), I strongly encourage you to have a play with different base shades with these.

The alternative title of this post is derived from a song I was fascinated by as a super-daggy child. Anyone guess what it is yet?