Nail Polish

So everyone knows about the iconic Beatles. I love them, I love being British 😀 I love that Deborah Lippmann names her polishes after songs. Across The Universe was never one of my favourite Beatles songs, but it is lovely. Funnily enough, this polish has a deep, inky, night-sky blue base, but the glitter is green and blue. I’ve never actually seen any universe but what I have seen of the night sky doesn’t look like this! Not that I’m complaining, the polish is totally gorgeous and has been on my wishlist since the beginning of time.

My very amazingly generous boyfriend Andy bought it for me for Christmas, along with another Deborah Lippmann polish… I can’t thank him enough, this zooms straight to my top 20 ever nail polishes, and is very high in the running!

The polish takes very different faces dependent on the lighting (hence the picture spammage) – the first 5 photos were in sunlight, the final 2 in natural light. I find that in natural light the glitter tends not to stand out so much and the deep blue base really dominates the polish, while in false lighting and sunlight, the glitter really comes alive.

Application

The photos all show 3 coats. The blue base is a jelly, making the polish quite sheer, but it builds very quickly. This is also helped by the density of the glitter… I don’t think it’s possible to avoid the glitter, there’s so much of it! The polish dried relatively quickly, so the 3 coats weren’t a problem. I found that, worn alone, the polish was quite dull, presumably because the blue base covered a lot of the glitter. However with 1 thick coat of topcoat, the polish became a magical lagoon of sea-green and blues 🙂 It has so much depth, I absolutely love it!

What do you guys think? Across The Universe retails at £16 from House of Fraser.. I don’t think there are many around on eBay or Amazon but it may be worth a look. This one frequently sells-out on House of Fraser though, so if you’ve missed it before, now’s your chance 😉

Do I think it’s worth it? Well I suppose I’m biased as the polish was gifted to me, but I really do think it’s worth the money. It’s sooo pretty and I can guarantee you won’t stop looking at your nails! 1000x more worthy of the price than a Chanel polish, in my very humble opinion. What are your thoughts?

Wanted to say a huuuuge thank you to my Andy for this rather extortionate present, I am eternally grateful! 😛 <3

Hope you are all well my lovelies, I do have a little New Year’s manicure lined up, so hopefully that will be up in the next few days. What are you doing for New Year’s? Any special manicures/nail art/makeup you’re planning on doing? If so, link me up, I’m very curious! 😀

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a lovely day and lots of lovely pressies! I certainly had a wonderful Christmas – I received a lot of AMAZING nail polish and skin care products so I am very chuffed! What did you get?

Here is a lovely red glitter (what do you mean you can tell from the name?!) by the lovely Barry M.

Read More »

First of all, this mini polish came in my favourite GlossyBox so far, their Christmas box. I believe you can still get one for the next couple of days. I absolutely loved this box! But I won’t waffle on about it now, there’s plenty of blogposts dedicated to it.

Now Deborah Lippmann has always been one of those brands I’ve admired from a safe distance, as a single full-sized bottle costs a whopping £14-16! Saying that I feel that all the glitter is more worthy of the hefty price tag than Chanel…

Anywho, the mini polish is a fairly decent size, probably roughly the size of Barbara Daly’s (at Tesco) smaller bottles, maybe a tad larger. Unlike OPI with their outrageously small bottles.

3 coats, without topcoat

With topcoat!

This is a lovely lovely polish. Essentially it contains a tonne of cranberry-raspberry glitter, suspended in a deep blackcurrant jelly base. The base is quite sheer, it took 3 coats to achieve full opacity. But it does give the polish quite a lovely dark dimension, as the glitter catches the light the rest looks deep and rich in colour. It dried relatively quickly, a bit longer than most glitters though.

Without a topcoat it’s a very grainy, average texture for a glitter, but just one coat of thick topcoat and it’s smooth and lovely. It catches the light beautifully.

My one major problem with this polish is that it stained my nails. I put on two coats of basecoat and I am still left with a pinky-orange tinge to my nails. I put on two coats of basecoat because Scrangie reviewed Razzle Dazzle and noted that she experienced staining. Now, call me fussy, but if I was to pay £14-16 for a polish I would NOT expect staining, and I would be unhappy to have to apply 3 coats. And I can’t buy it anyway, because House of Fraser (who presumably supplied these to GlossyBox as they were cited on the description card for ‘where to buy’) don’t even stock it.

So is this polish worth it? In my eyes, no. I feel like if I bought a similarly coloured glitter topcoat and layered it over a murky pinky-red base I would have a cheap and cheerful (perhaps mediocre) substitute. However I do see the appeal as it is gorgeous and quite unique, I just feel that for the price, it really isn’t something I would stretch to. Across The Universe, on the other hand, wow!

I am of course very pleased that this came in my GlossyBox as Deborah Lippmann is a brand I’ve been dying to try for a year now!

Hope you are all well my lovelies, I’m well and truly knackered after such a heavy semester at Uni and fully glad to be on holiday! Andy and I are planning to go to London tomorrow to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, will be so much fun! Last day to enter my giveaway everyone! I’ve had some good suggestions about how to improve my blog so this is very good 😀 So close to Christmas, eee!

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

So here’s where I’m going to get caught out using older pictures! In my last post, my nails were as short as they are now, as I had a practical exam (which I passed by the way – woo!) and the eagle-eyed among you will notice that my nails are long in this post! Well it’s because I’m a bad blogger and I’m backlogging. Sorry! 😛

I bought this lovely one last year, at the beginning of December, and it pretty much marked the beginning of my interest (read: obsession) with nail polish!

Movie Star is one of those colour-shifters… in most lights it looks a very pinky-red, then occasionally it will appear a very orange toned red which makes no sense! It’s kind of a foily-glitter polish, certainly very interesting and quite unique. What I like about it is that it’s festive but without being quite so ‘out-there’ as a true glitter. Also it is a lot more easy to apply and remove than a true glitter!

It was practically opaque in one-coat, but I added a second just to be sure. As it’s a 60-second polish, surprise surprise, it dried really quickly. Usually super fast dry-time = streaky draggy mess, but Movie Star has that lovely foily consistency which doesn’t seem to drag, so it’s a big bonus!

The brush is quite wide, which for me is a bonus as it means less dabbing around trying to cover my whole nail, but I know a lot of people with slimmer nails will find it a pain.

All in all I LOVE this polish, it’s so pretty and eye-catching without being as OTT as glitter (can’t believe I am saying this, as a full-time glitter addict!) and it’s lovely for Christmas time and New Years!

I’ve finished my first semester now, exciting! This means I will hopefully have a lot more time to blog for 3 weeks, before going on placement for 6 weeks. I’m very very happy at the moment, things are going wonderfully 🙂 Hope you are all feeling as good as me! Oh and my GlossyBox came on Thursday, my favourite box so far 😀 you will be seeing a very special something from it on my blog in the next few days!

Have you entered my giveaway? Only 2 days left now!

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

So after doing my blog post on Barry M Lilac Foil Effects from Superdrug, a few days later I wandered into Boots and lo and behold, Boots are doing a Ltd Edition Boots exclusive Barry M too! The offer is identical – spend £6 or more on any Barry M products and get Silver Glitter for free, or just buy it alone for £3.99.

One thing has me totally confused about this polish… The lid has a holographic sticker on, implying the polish is holographic… however, it is just literally a silver glitter top coat. Observe:

See what I mean? The name on the base is ‘Silver Glitter’, so I don’t really know where the holographic lid sticker came from. Maybe it’s for eye-catching-ness.

I’ve literally just put this on over my naked nails, hence the yucky stainage 😛 I did 1 coat on my pinkie, 2 coats on my ring finger, 3 on my middle finger and 4 on my index finger, to show you the opacity (or lack of!). I think realistically this is best suited as a topcoat, because at 4 coats it still isn’t totally opaque.

Silver Glitter dried quickly which is good, especially if you want to wear it alone as a silver glitter polish… you can afford to rush it 😛 At one coat the polish is quite smooth as it’s mostly a clear base with random bits of glitter, but with the increasing amount of coats comes the increasing amount of glittery grittiness so you will need a nice thick topcoat if grittiness bothers you. The glitter is very sparkly without a topcoat.

Oh and by the way, it’s really a lot more sparkly than my pictures let on, it’s because my nails are quite curved that my camera can’t pick up the reflection on the sides, but I promise it is sparkly all over!

So this is a lovely holiday/party/Christmas season polish as it’s very eye-catching. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s anything particularly special as it’s essentially just another silver glitter top coat. So if you already have a silver glitter, I wouldn’t bother with this one unless you’re already buying £6 worth of Barry M products. Even if you are, I’d recommend doing it in Superdrug as the Lilac Foil Effects are far more unique and I certainly haven’t seen anything quite like it before!

You may have noticed that my nails are once again shorter… this is because tomorrow I have a practical exam and they like everything to be clinical and pristine, which means nails must be short and bare for infection control. Which makes me a tad sad, but at least my nails will be nice and strong and I can work on growing out these stains! I am very nervous about tomorrow by the way. Eep.

Hope you are all doing well, it’s getting so close to Christmas and I am ridiculously excited by this 😀 have you entered my giveaway?

Emma x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.