Mani Monday: Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe

So last week I helped my mom take our big galoot of a labrador, Rusalka, to the vet for her annual check-up. She’s a lab, and she’s highly excitable and STRONG. It always helps to have an extra body on hand for these things, particularly if the vet ends up with an emergency and we end up having to wait a little bit longer than our usual five minutes.

Well, guess what happened? The vet ended up with not one but TWO emergencies around our appointment time and we ended up waiting for almost an hour with our big, strong, and by that point completely cracked out blonde lab. She was drooling, panting, and getting so ramped up about being at the vet’s that she started walking backwards – which signifies that she’s whipped herself up to the point of giving herself intestinal distress. To make matters worse, there also seemed to be an excess of little dogs around waiting that day. She’s good with dogs her own size, but absolutely TERRIFIED of little dogs for some reason (We’ve always been baffled by this – she could squish them like bugs if she wanted to…). So she spent the hour alternating between frantically pulling at the leash trying to hide behind us or in between our legs, and throwing all 125 lbs of muscle (and a little bit of chub) at the door in an attempt to escape whenever it would open.

Overall, not fun. Not fun at all. My arm was sore for days from holding onto the leash.

She looks so well behaved, doesn’t she? She’s a master of deception, I tell ya.

Well, anyway, apparently sometime over the course of the day my mom and I had been talking about nail polish, and I had mentioned the fact that I’ve been lusting after Deborah Lippmann’s Across the Universe for years. I don’t even remember mentioning it, or what in conversation brought it up. But apparently it happened, because Saturday as I was sitting on the couch having some lunch, my phone rang and it was my mom telling me that she had picked me up a bottle as a thank you for enduring that hellish vet visit with her.

Because misery loves company… and nail polish.

As soon as I got my hands on it, I immediately gave it a shot. Overall, I love love love it. It’s sparkly, and squishy, and basically designed to automatically produce a jelly sandwich. It’s just gorgeous.

There are two big cons, however. First of all, this is not a polish you want to use if you’ve got shit to do in the near future, because it took 4 coats (5 on one or two nails) to be opaque. I sort of expected this, since that’s kind of the price you pay for the jelly sandwich effect, but the mani still took literally all night to fully dry. Also, it’s better on this one if you let every coat dry completely before doing the next coat – otherwise your potential for dents is astronomical.

Second con is that it doesn’t look the greatest in direct sunlight. Because of the dark dark base, this is a polish that definitely shines brightest in the shade/indoors. That’s where you really get the depth and squishiness, and where the glitter really sparkles. Direct sunlight leaves it looking sort of mottled – so this is a color much more suited to winter manicures.

Both of these downsides were things I had been expecting however, so I consider this one an A+ as far as I’m concerned.