Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe

   It snowed here on Friday, it's way too early for snow. Anyway, today's NOTD is Across The Universe from Deborah Lippmann! Deborah Lippmann polishes are some of my favorite by far! Who doesn't want a jelly sandwich already made to perfection? This is one of her most popular colors, it's a gorgeous navy jelly with medium sized teal and green hex glitter and loads of small green hex glitter. Formula was great but I did have trouble with dragging so make sure you allow a few minutes between coats to avoid this.

The pictures are 3 coats with no top coat.

 The last one is in the shade, even without sun it has gorgeous depth.

Deborah Lippmann nail polish is available at Nordstrom stores. The creme finish polishes are $16 and the glitter polishes are $18.

Maybelline Color Show- Green With Envy and Pretty & Polished- On Equal Ground

Today's NOTD is Maybelline Color Show in Green with Envy. I really love this color, actually, which is odd considering I haven't seen any other polish blogs swatch any of the colors in this line. I think that everyone who loves polish and knows indie polish brands overlooks drug store brands, myself included.
     Anyway, I saw this color and instantly knew I needed it! Good thing I bought it because I adore it, formula and color. It could possibly be a 1 coater if you do thicker coats, I prefer thin coats so it took me 2 to get full opacity. Ugh, sorry for the crappy photos, I plan on trying to get a camera soon but it's been too rainy and dark outside to get accurate photos so these are from inside.
     Green with Envy is a gorgeous sea foam green color, these colors don't do it any justice. It leans a little more green toned than China Glaze For Audrey. If you see it in the bottle, it's basically exactly the same on the nail. You can get this line at any major drug store, I got mine at Fred Meyer.

     Of course I couldn't have plain ol' polish on my nails so I dabbed some glitter on the tips from Pretty & Polished called On Equal Ground. This is definitely my go to glitter top coat. It's a mix of medium red, green, yellow, blue, and purple hex pieces and small glitter hex glitter. It works with every nail color and has an amazing consistency. A lot of indie polishes I own have required nail polish thinner but this glitter is perfection.

     Sorry the bottle label is smudged, my cat spilled water on my nightstand and this polish was a victim of the flood :(

DIY Nail Polish Organizer

   Even before my adventure to Alaska, storage for my lovelies (nail polish) has been really difficult for me. My collection isn't so large that I need an piece of furniture to contain it but it's big enough to not fit into a shoe box. I previously had it stored in this crappy three drawer plastic bin that wasn't tall enough and couldn't handle how heavy my polish was leaving me worse off than before. Long story, I know, but now that I'm up here and finally, but not really, settled in, I figured I needed to get it off the shelf that it's inhabiting right now. The BF is sick of it taking up "his" space (seriously, though, he probably just needs to throw away whatever he plans to put there anyway).
 

    Here's my beautiful organizer thanks to this site! Although, I substituted her advice of a Diet Coke with a beverage more suited to my life, beer. In the instructions she only adds a few nails to the shelves for support which worked fine for her. I'm paranoid, though, so I nailed the sides to each shelf and added a few more elsewhere which probably provide no support, but give me peace of mind. For the front of the shelves I used ribbon instead of fabric and it worked like a charm! If you decide to get tacky spray, use caution, my fingers were so coated that I ended up getting caught in my cat's tail 2 hours after.

   I haven't added the polish yet but I'm pretty stoked! I'll put up pictures when I finally get it hung and organized :)

   Finally, a pretty picture from my deck.

Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker

So, it's been a rough few weeks for my nails and cuticles thanks to the manual labor required with moving. I finally decided to suck it up and paint my fugly fingers anyway.

You all have hopefully heard of Pretty & Polished, if not, you really need to hop on the bandwagon because she makes absolutely gorgeous polishes with formulas to die for. I have a really hard time working with some indie polishes because of how thick they tend to be, but it's totally worth it regardless. Her polishes so far have been consistently smooth, opaque in 2-3 coats and dry really quickly also. This NOTD is probably her most famous polish Jawbreaker, which coincidentally looks just like a jawbreaker!

Again, apologies all around for the awful state of my nails/cuticles haha. Anyway, this polish is a white jelly base that leans more towards a cream with the capability of full opaqueness in 2 coats. It's loaded with colorful small hex glitter and, my favorite, giant red hex glitter! I always get around 1 nail on each hand that gets a cute cluster of the red hex glitter and I love it.

You can visit Pretty & Polished etsy site here, although it's not always open but like her page on Facebook to get updates for when she restocks.

Well, here we go...

I've been talking about making a blog for my nail polish adventures for what feels like months. I figure it's my turn to give back to the nail junkie community and maybe humiliate myself a little. My nails are far from perfect, my nail painting skills leave something to be desired, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because this is what I love.