Nail Night Mani - Across the Universe

The second best thing (after the great company) about nail night is getting to try out polishes I don't own. We all pile a bunch of polish on the table, peruse each others offerings, and try something different. This week, I got to try out a polish I'd only seen online, and yall, I think I'm in love with Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe.

 

Lissa, this beauty's owner, advised me that it takes at least three coats to get it fully opaque, so it would be good to put it over something else. I started with one thin coat of Revlon Top Speed Royal. Royal is a bright medium blue - royal blue - and is thick and easy to control. It could almost be a one coat polish, though I'd do two to make sure the color was even if I were going to wear it by itself. As the name implies, it dries very quickly. On top of Royal, I put two medium coats of Across the Universe. This polish has a dark blue, transparent, jelly base full of small light blue glitter and large, green and blue, hexagonal glitter. Due to the thick jelly texture of the base, the glitter appears to float in it. It was also easy to apply. The messiness of the application here should be attributed to me paying more attention to chatting than polishing rather than anything to do with either polish. Here's a closer picture to show the depth you can see in Across the Universe.

I finished off with two coats of Out the Door, which was enough to make it smooth and glossy. In the interest of fair warning, it did take quite a while to dry in spite of the top coat. I LOVE this polish, and I think I'm going to have to get some for my very own. 

On a final note, I know that the name of this polish is a reference to the Beatles song, but for some reason whenever I think about it Under the Milky Way by The Church pops into my head instead. So, I'll leave you with that (I couldn't actually find a video of the original version of this song, which is what's in my head, so you'll have to settle for this audio only version).

 

Nail Night Mani - Awesome 80's

As I've mentioned before, my nail polish obsession started with the periodic Nail Night get-togethers held by a friend. Several ladies (and a couple of colorful gentlemen who do their toes only) get together to share nail polish and friendship. Two of these ladies have extensive nail polish collections and knowledge, and introduced me to nail stamping and nail blogs. In order to make it easier for them (and increasingly, me) to narrow down what to bring to nail night, it's been decided that we'll start having themes each time we get together. The first theme, given what a big trend it is right now, was crackle.

I'm still working my way through trying all of my crackles (I'm intentionally spacing them out a bit so I don't get tired of the look) and trying different ways of applying them. This time, used China Glaze Broken Hearted, which is a bright pink, creamy textured crackle. Like all the colored China Glaze Crackle Glazes, it's thick and dries quickly, but it wasn't really hard to apply. I decided to apply it horizontally, but just to slap it on a little differently on each nail. I took pictures of both hands, so you can see all the different results I got. My favorites are the nails where I applied short strokes from the edge to the middle of the nail from both directions. You can see this best on the ring finger of my left hand in the picture below.

The base color on this is Ruby Kisses Green Tomatoes, which I borrowed from on of my Nail Night companions. In the bottle, it looked like a very bright shimmery green. However, it was not very thickly pigmented, so even after three coats, it still looked much more yellow than green on the nail. It also made for very thick edges for some reason. You can even see in the pictures how a few of my nails have these jagged ridges around the edge, and I couldn't seem to get rid of them. So, I couldn't say I'm a fan of this polish.

Princess Sparkle Pony Manicure

I noticed that my last few manicures have had a definite blue/grey theme. So, when an impromptu nail night was convened, I decided I wanted to do something totally different. I imagine that if a Barbie Princess were riding a My Little Pony Pegasus, this is what her nails would look like.

I looked for a REALLY bright polish to use as a base and reached for China Glaze Shocking Pink. I really like the color of this polish, which is best described by the name. It is a very bright pink that almost seems to gather up the light in a room, it's so bright. This is my first experience with a neon polish, and I had the main problem they're known for. I put on two medium thickness coats, and it was still quite streaky. I think that a third thin coat would have evened it out, but I decided to add glitter on top instead.

Our nail night host had a bottle of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Disco Ball in her collection, so I added two coats of that on top of Shocking Pink. It didn't photograph well but this is a clear base with lots of very small, very iridescent glitter. The glitter is a nice balance of several colors, so it doesn't end up looking predominately one color like some similar polishes I've tried. The polish applied a little gooey, but that made it an ideal base to add the stars to my accent nail. The stars are party confetti re-purposed for nail decoration.

I finished off with two coats of Out the Door quick dry top coat to even out the texture of the glitter. The final product is very sparkly and eye catching. We've had lovely weather with plenty of sun the last couple of days, and these nails are perfect for it.