Mani Monday Deborah Lippmann Space Oddity Trio

My love affair for Deborah Lippmann nail polishes began last year with the color Candy Shop which may as well be a cupcake in a bottle. It's wonderful. So imagine my delight when I popped into Sephora to find a Deborah Lippmann trio on sale! Originally $29 it was on sale for $13.99. These are just about half size (8mL versus the usual 15mL.) The trio is called Space Oddity and contains the colors When Lightning Strikes (silver polish with gold micro glitter and white glitter),  Planet Rock (a violet grey crème), and Baby I'm A Star (champagne gold with gold micro glitter and pink glitter.)

These colors are all gorgeous, but I chose Planet Rock to try out first. It has great opaque coverage in two coats. It's a moody neutral that is quite chic.  I can't wait to try out the other two.

What's on your nails this week?

Champagne & Caviar

I know this is a little late, but everyone keeps asking me about my nails. If you didn't see my picture on Instagram, here it is. Yes I realize the edges are messy, I cleaned them up right before I went out the door, but I was doing these a bit last minute.

I wanted to do a Champagne and Caviar manicure because I thought it fit with New Year's Eve very well. I had to buy some nails because in the midst of packing and moving, I managed to bang up my nails pretty badly. I bought Kiss nails in a huge pack of different sized clear nails in the medium length oval shape. They were a little long for me so I filed them down a little bit. I used Essie Good as Gold polish for the Champagne (I was pretty happy with one coat and I was in a major hurry) and I used Sinful Colors Black on Black for the caviar. The pearls are a generic version of the Ciate caviar pearls and I bought them on Ebay for a lot cheaper (7 colors for about $19 compared to Ciate's $25 for one kit.)

Voila! Ultra luxe manicure.

Ciate Velvet Manicure Review

A few months ago I bought the Ciate mother of pearl caviar nail set and was pretty happy with it. Just in time for the holidays, Ciate came out with their velvet manicure. I was dying to get my hands on both the deep garnet red and the navy blue. The two Sephora stores near me were out of the blue, so I decided to just try the red for now. I have to say I'm glad I didn't buy two. The color of the polish is absolutely stunning and I would definitely wear it again. The velvet is a whole different story. It was a little bit difficult to apply and the container for the velvet cracked halfway through doing my nails. I managed to finish up my manicure and it looked pretty good for about an hour. Once I had to wash my hands it looked a little worse for wear. The velvet dries pretty quickly, but doesn't look the same afterward. After about one day of wear my nails simply looked as if I had smudged the polish while it was wet. I did mine for Christmas (velvet always makes me think of Christmas) and it was sufficient to get me through the day. For $19 though I wasn't overly impressed. It's good for a one night occasion, but I didn't find it had lasting power past that.

I would give it a 3/5. Pretty, but not spectacular.

What nail trends have you tried?

How to fix your completely destroyed nails

So maybe you've been being a little rough with your nails, maybe someone else was (link), or maybe you've never really known what to do with them. My nails got absolutely murdered so I had to do what I could to salvage them. I'll do a video on nail maintenance another time so you can avoid this kind of situation.

Hopefully my video helps a little bit!

Happy holidays!