HBP Presents Starry Night Sky

I am in the 'Hobby Polish Blogger' Facebook group. They do a themed blog link up every month and I decided to finally try joining in. The theme for July is Starry Night Sky which was too enticing for me to resist. I decided to get literal with the theme and create constellation nail art featuring the Summer Triangle which is blazing in the sky overhead this time of year.

From index to pinkie finger I painted Aquila, Cygnus, Lyra, and Delphinus. Since all I have to work with are nubs, Cygnus had its wings clipped and is more accurately the Northern Cross. The constellations aren't perfect but I think they are at least recognizable and I am happy overall with how things turned out. One thing I am less than happy with is the shrinkage I have at my tips, which is something I haven't really experienced before but that I attribute to the sheer number of layers of polish that went into creating this manicure.

I started with a base of Enchanted Polish Regal and then topped it with OPI Color Paint in Indigo Motif. I topcoated that with HK Girl to help it set because the OPI seemed to stay soft for quite a while after painting and I ended up smudging one nail and having to redo a second. I then topped them with a coat of Enchanted Polish Instant Galaxy which is very aptly named and did a wonderful job of approximating a stellar background. I used Urban Outfitters Silver Holo and a dotting tool to place the stars of my constellations. I had the "bright" idea of using the holographic bar glitter in Zoya Electra as the lines creating the constellation figures and soon regretted it because it ended up taking hours of tedious effort that failed more often than it succeeded. Finally however, I had a manicure that reminded me of the start charts I used to teach myself the heavens when I was young. I topped it with yet more HK Girl and found it almost too shiny to photograph so I tried a matte topcoat instead but that looked awful.  I did a final layer of HK Girl and worked to find photographic angles that minimized glare. The topcoats caused some bleeding of the base colors that turned several of my stars blue so I went over them again with more silver holo. Whew!! I think this may have been the most labor intensive manicure I have ever done. But I do like the end result. 

These nails are ridiculously sparkly and holographic in the sunlight. The bar glitters are small enough that they sort of shift in and out of visibility which is a really neat effect. The microglitters from Instant Galaxy lend another touch of realism, particularly given that the Milky Way runs through the Summer Triangle so it is rich with background stars.

I'm glad I finally decided to tackle one of these themed link ups. It pushed me outside my comfort zone and while I wasn't quite anticipating how much time I would put into the manicure I have had a lot of fun admiring the star chart that is literally at my fingertips.

An InLinkz Link-up

Indigo Bananas - Neon the 10th Element

My blog! It lives!! Well, okay, we've been here before and it never seems to last but let's not dwell on that and just enjoy this special moment together, shall we? I confess that I have been two-timing with that Instagram hussy but she asks so little of me compared to Blogger, and I appear to be a lazy lacquerista (but not THE Lazy Laquerista, who is lovely and talented and does blog regularly so you should all go follow her at http://www.thelazylaquerista.com ). 

So what, you ask, has bestirred me to knock the cobwebs off my keyboard and return to blogging? Well, that would be the amazing neon collection that Andrea over at Indigo Bananas has released. It is called the "Neon, the 10th Element" collection and every name is a delightful wordsmash of the periodic table of the elements and the movie The Fifth Element - does that give anyone else warm fuzzies or just me? It includes Rhubidium Rhod (neon red), LiLoo (LithiumLoo) (neon orange), Sulfur Green (neon green), The Uranium Evil (neon yellow), Diva Plumbum (neon teal), Carbon Dallas (neon blue), Phlogiston Paradise (neon purple), Zinc Industries (neon purple/magenta), and Neon, the 10th Element (neon pink).

The colors are phenomenal. The yellow, orange, pink and green are intense neons - they look just like the ink from the highlighters that I tore through while I was in school. Because of that my poor camera freaked out and was unable to capture their true intensity. But trust me - highlighter ink. 

They dry to a marvelous rubber finish. I have an example here where I was painting a base for some nail art that failed so they may have benefitted from an additional coat on some colors and there is no cleanup but ignore all that and check out the glorious rubbery-ness of Carbon Dallas, Phlogiston Paradise, The Uranium Evil and Rhubidium Rhod:

Rubbery!

I ended up settling on a skittles manicure to showcase all the colors in the collection. I then topped them with Spotted Snow by Ethereal Lacquer - a topcoat with holo pigment and black dot glitter. The resulting manicure is pure 1980s fun. 

I destroyed the delightful rubber finish by adding the Spotted Snow and a final topcoat of HKGirl. Oh well. Shiny!

I call this pose "spaghetti fingers"

See, I told you they were a perfect match for highlighter colors!

I don't watermarble but The Polished Perspective did a comparison of several of the neon indie collections that have come out this year and determined that the Indigo Bananas neons are the best of the creme formulas that she tested as far as watermarbling is concerned. 

There are three additional non-neon polishes in the collection - a lovely light grey holo called Aether Or and two flakie mixes, Mul-Ti-Pass and Earth, Wind & Fire. Like all Indigo Bananas polishes, the collection is available in both full size bottles and generously sized 8mL minis. Head over to the Indigo Bananas website and check them out!