Across the Universe Louboutin - Blue Glitter with Reverse Painting

I got a sudden urge to wear one of my first Deborah Lippmann polishes, Across the Universe. I haven't worn this is AGES - maybe two years!  

This is two coats of Across the Universe, with added topcoat for shine.

I love this polish. It's a deep blue jelly, filled with blue and silver glitter, which ends up giving a lovely jelly sandwich effect. I always think it looks mermaidy and sea-like. 

I decided to up this one by painting the backs of my nails too. I haven't done this in a while, but my nails are getting really long, so it seemed a good idea. I used the Barry M limited edition blue foil from Christmas 2012. 

It's really hard to take a photo of the back of my nails!

I've been wearing these nails for three days now, and I still don't want to take them off!

 

Deborah Lippmann - Let's Go Crazy

This is the second of my three Deborah Lippmann polishes which I found in TK Maxx for a bargain, and this is the one that made me want to buy the set! This is Let's Go Crazy.

Let's Go Crazy was apparently a limited edition a while ago in certain US stores only. I saw it at the time on blogs, and thought it looked fabulous, but of course, couldn't get it. So I was pretty pleased to see it in TK Maxx!  This is two coats, with topcoat.

Let's Go Crazy is a dark purple jelly base, with multi-coloured glitter in different sizes. It is a bit like Happy Birthday in purple, or Forget You, the Happy Birthday in a black base, but as you can see from the two side by side, they're not really that similar. Forget You (on the left) has much more dense glitter, and more of it is silver, whereas with Let's Go Crazy, the purple jelly base is far more visible, and there is less silver glitter and more purple glitter in the mix.

I love how Let's Go Crazy looks on the nail - the purple is dark, but not so dark that it's black. The jelly shows the glitter without it looking too obvious and blingy, but still lets it sparkle.

This has lasted really well too. I've been wearing this for three days now and it still looks perfect. And with nails as long as mine are now, they're catching in things all the time (zips, keys on my laptop, things in my handbag, all that sort of thing) and yet it's not chipped or peeled or looked at all affected. Which does make me worry that it might take a bit of work to remove...!

Deborah Lippmann - Believe

I found a set of three Deborah Lippmann polishes in TK Maxx for £15! I haven't bought a Lippmann for ages; the ones I've seen in recent months just haven't excited me, apart from one, which was apparently a limited edition.  And there it was as part of a set of three in TK Maxx!  Not this gold, but another one - post to follow maybe this weekend!

This is Believe, a gold foil that was apparently created with Cher. I thought this would be a bit dull, as it's quite a pale, silvery gold, and not the usual kind of gold I like that is far more yellow.

This is two coats of Believe, with topcoat. I love this! Application is great - really nice and smooth, very even and dries well. I've worn this for three days now and it's still perfect, so I'm impressed.

This is so shiny, I really like it.

I don't think I'd have paid full price for this, but for a fiver, I'm really happy.

Deborah Lippmann - Bad Romance

Just a quick post today! I realised that what I was wearing today was a polish I've never posted here, and it was looking pretty, so I snapped some photos before I left for work.

This is Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance - nothing new, but a lovely polish in my opinion. It's a black jelly base with bright fuschia purple glitter in different sizes. Here I'm wearing one coat of Bad Romance over one coat of Barry M Vivid Purple.

Mystery Vintage Polish! Unnamed NARS jelly.

Today I am wearing a NARS polish that is probably around 20 years old. This was my mother's, and I recently "borrowed" it from her! I remember her buying this in Liberty's in London in - I think - the early 1990s. We were having a day out, and she bought me a Chanel polish that was a clear, bright red jelly (I think it was a Vernis Cristallin, but not sure) and this one for herself. 

There is no label, or writing at all, other than NARS on one side of the bottle, and NAIL POLISH on another. 

This is a deep blackberry-ish coloured jelly, and is in perfect condition despite the age. The bottle cap lifts off, like a Chanel bottle. This is three coats, with no base or topcoat. I woke up early this morning, so these photos are in very early morning sunshine. 

The colour is very very sheer, so the first coat is almost invisible in colour, but is very shiny. The second coat starts adding more colour depth, and the third makes the colour a lot clearer. The formula is a little thin, and the polish tends to pool a little round the cuticles, but application is really smooth, and the finish is extremely glossy!

I remember really loving my red Chanel jelly (I would really love to find another) as it looked a bit like a boiled sweet, but that this purple polish was a bit less impressive. Still, I do really like it, and I love that it's still great after all these years.


I wore this with my newest ring, made with Deborah Lippmann's Forget You. I did already have a Forget You ring, but the cabochon fell off during the Springsteen concert in Manchester, so I have now made a new one. This one has a larger, domed cabochon this time round, which is quite heavy and chunky, and adds to the effect. I like it a lot more than my old one.



       
If you have any idea what this NARS polish might be called, please let me know!

Argh!

This was my lovely mani for most of yesterday:

I am ashamed! This started out as Deborah Lippmann Forget You, which looked lovely and black and sparkly and rocky, with a matching Forget You ring. After a few hours queueing in the torrential rain, and a few hours bouncing around waving my hands in the air, somehow most of my polish had peeled off, I'd lost the big cabochon on my ring, I was covered in ink and the wrinkles in my fingers were totally prune-worthy due to the soaking.

It was totally worth it though!

Nail Varnish Jewellery!

Having seen this online on a few blogs, and on sale on various websites, and lusting after some of my own, I thought 'how hard can it be?' and decided to make my own!

I bought some basic supplies from Amazon UK (some round glass cabochons, some oval ones, a pendant kit and some ring bases) and when they arrived on Saturday, I got painting.

First I cleaned all the cabochons really well with nail varnish remover. Then I stuck them in some blobs of blue tack to hold them steady, and painted the flat sides with clear base coat. Then I painted layers of my chosen nail varnish over the flat side, and waited a LONG time for them to be really really dry. When it looked right, I added topcoat, and then super glued the small cabochons to the bases and the large one to the pendant base. 

This is what I ended up with! (click to enlarge)

This is Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday (the one I was most excited about, but in the end, the most disapppointing I think):


This is a round pendant and oval ring in China Glaze Blonde Bombshell:


This is China Glaze Ruby Pumps:

And this is Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe:


I decided to start with only a few, just to see how it went. But as it was so easy, and the results seem so good, I'm going to order a load more supplies, and make more! I want rings to match any nails!

I LOVE how these look! They catch the light so well, and are just so shiny and pretty. And they can match my nails! How awesome is that?

Deborah Lippmann - Forget You

This is part two of my Deborah Lippmann gift set, Forget You.

This is a sheer black base, with multicoloured glitter. It's quite a thick formula, and went on a bit lumpy at times, but it evened out, and with some practice I got it quite smooth.  This is two coats with two coats of topcoat (Seche Vite). 


This looks totally different to ordinary black glitter with Happy Birthday over the top (I've done that, but not taken photos) as this is much more three dimensional, and you can see glitter hidden underneath the layers of black.

We also had some sunshine today! Well, daylight at least! Enough for me to take photos anyway.

I really like how different this is, but to be honest I didn't love this as much as I expected to. I like the multicoloured glitter, and I like the layered effect, but I was a bit disappointed by how thick it was and I would have liked it to be sparklier. I also found there seemed to be a lot more glitter in this than in Candy Shop - Candy Shop had plenty of pink between the glitter, even with three coats, whereas this seems to have a far more solid glitter cover even though it's two coats. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I prefer the look of Candy Shop, even though I do love black nail varnish!

Deborah Lippmann - Candy Shop

Post 3 of my weekend spam-fest is a Barbie pink glitterbomb!


I went Christmas shopping yesterday, and managed to buy myself FOUR bottles of Deborah Lippmann nail varnish! I think that's allowed though, because this was a bargain!

This set was £28 in House of Fraser, and for that you get three bottles in a nice sturdy box: Happy Birthday (multi coloured glitter in a clear base), Candy Shop (the same glitter in a pink jelly base), and Forget You (the same glitter in a black jelly base). That's £9.30 per bottle, which is great when you consider that usually Deborah Lippmann polishes cost £14 or £16.  I already have Happy Birthday, but I can give this one to someone, so technically I suppose it was Christmas shopping! (Yes, you can count. I did also buy another bottle on top of this set! I'll post that another day.)

Anyway, this is Candy Shop. It's a pale pink jelly base with multi coloured glitter in different sizes and shapes.  I really loved how one coat looked - very sheer and shiny and such a pretty shade of pink, with random bits of glitter scattered through it. Then I went on and added two more coats, and I love how it looks. It's so pretty, and because the glitter is mixed in with the pink it looks totally different to a pink nail varnish with a separate glitter on top. The glitter looks a lot more subtle in this, I think. 



And just to make the weekend even better - the sun came out for about an hour! A whole hour! YAY!!

Deborah Lippmann - Since I Fell For You

Post 2 of my spamfest for this weekend is Deborah Lippmann's Since I Fell For You.  This is another nail varnish that I've had for a while but not yet photographed. I bought it on a whim one afternoon in House of Fraser (£14 I think) and I love it!

This is two coats + topcoat, indoor light again because of the stupid weather.

Since I Fell For You is a rich, extravagant feeling deep red. To me, it feels really luxurious and elegant. I don't often wear reds, and when I do they quite often feel a bit tarty and cheap looking on me, but I really like this one!

I really like the application on this one. The bottle is excellent - as well as being very pretty, I like that it's really stable, so you don't have to hold it while you're painting, you can dip away without any risk of it being knocked over. The colour goes on very smoothly, doesn't look streaky or uneven, and is perfect in two coats. There's a really lovely sheen to the colour, and it lasts very well, no chips or anything in the two days I wore it, until I made the mistake of trying to prise open a preserving jar and chipped a couple of nails. That was my own fault though.