Essie Dive Bar + Deborah Lippman Across the Universe = Heaven!

Oh my, do I have a special combination to show you today, people. Looking through my rapidly-filling Helmer for inspiration tonight I decided it was finally time for me to try out one of the polishes that got me addicted to polish, Deborah Lippman Across the Universe. I've seen this one swatched plenty of times on its own so I thought I'd see what it looked like with a base colour. Essie Dive Bar had the same kinds of colours so I thought I'd see what they looked like together. Man, both of these are awesome!

First, let's look at the swatches for Essie Dive Bar. A dark green-blue-purple duochrome, this is a simply beautiful polish. I love dark colours to start with but this one with it's subtle colour shifts, oh so good. Application was really good, what you see here is two coats.

What I was really surprised by with this polish was how many colours it holds on the close up. Look at the next picture, see all the blues, purples and greens? So pretty. I was so tempted just to stop at this but I tried Across the Universe on one finger and knew I just had to keep going.

Here we have it, finally, Deborah Lippman Across the Universe, swatched at last. After some of the giant glitters I've been trying lately with the Lacquistry polishes it didn't blow me away like it might have a few weeks ago but it's still so beautiful. A blue jelly base with tiny blue hex glitters and large green and blue pieces. Application was nice, as you'd expect, these picture are all with just the one coat, topped with a coat of Seche Vite. I found this a lot easier than most to get an even distribution.

View these in the larger view, I dare you. Try not to be mesmerised by the glass glitter of Dive Bar in the back and lovely glitters in the front. Yesssssss.

The Verdict: I love both these polishes. They applied wonderfully, dried fast and needed only the one or two coats. I love how the two of them together create this sparkly, deep pond feel. Was it worth it for the $20 Across the Universe cost? Hmm. I really wanted this one in particular because I've coveted it for so long but there are plenty of blue and green glitters out there that would probably get you by. Dive Bar, on the other hand, has a surprising amount of different colours and colour shift to it and I'm a fan.

Review: Nicole by OPI A Million Sparkles is Accurately Named

It's amazing what you can find when you wander around at night. My favourite time to go shopping is ridiculously late and I'm extra happy when it pays off. I've been looking for Nicole by OPI A Million Sparkles for a while now at that couldn't be more up my alley if it tried. I finally managed to find it in a Shoppers last night and it really does live up to its name. A Million Sparkles is a predominately blue glitter that has an amazing ability to look like a foil after a couple of coats. Combine that with gold, silver and pink bar glitter and you have a winner. It's seriously so sparkly I got distracted from what I was saying at lunch today. Application is decent but you really need four coats to get completely opaque coverage. That's ok, glitter dries fast. It's a little rough too but nothing Seche Vite can't fix. The Verdict: Yay glitter! If, like me, you like sparklies to the point where it's the biggest tag on y

Review: JENsations Stars in Space and S'mores

Guess what everyone? I'm going to review some indie polishes that you can actually buy without having to wait for email messages! Yay! And sparkly too! Imagine all the holo glory as while my lightbox produces lovely even white light, it saps any and all rainbows from manis, leaving me to try to take pictures in my kitchen like a barbarian. It may not sound that hard but when you use a manual focus 60mm macro lens that has a wafer-thin depth of field, it's not the easiest. Anyway, let's take a look at two, that's right, two, beautiful polishes from JENsations , Stars in Space and S'mores. First up, Stars in Space. I started with two coats of Zoya Caprice, a very bright purple creme that you'll be seeing a lot of as it makes for a great base. Next, two coats of Stars in Space, the most fabulous mix of silver holo glitter. There's stars, squares (man, I love square glitter), hexes and micro glitter. I liked this one as there was enough glitter on

Giveaway for Reaching 100 Posts!

So I've been blogging here for coming up on two months now but I've already managed to get to 100 posts! To celebrate, I'm giving away the FULL COLLECTION OF CHINA GLAZE PRISMATICS! These are incredibly hard to find but I love you guys and want one of you to experience the awesomeness too. Enter below, someone is gunna win allllll these:

Polish All the Nails

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