Deborah Lippmann Lady Sings the Blues

Every year for their anniversary, Nordstrom has a big anniversary sale, and as a part of that sale, different cosmetics companies will release some kind of collection, special product, or Nordstrom exclusive shade to celebrate, well, one of my favorite stores in the world. Deborah Lippmann, a pretty nice department store polish brand, has been taking that opportunity for the last couple of years to bring us some very fun glitters - some, not all, like last year's Funky Chunky which looked about as yummy as it sounds. This year, they released just for Nordstrom's use a set of three polishes called the All That Jazz collection as well as two other polishes (I believe all of these will be available on Lippmann's website later in the year), all of which are like glitter orgasms.

I just got the set in the mail last week, so after the LiLo manicure, I had to break into it immediately, and out of the three colors, a blue with chunky silver glitter, a magenta with magenta glitter, and a rose glitter in a clear base, I had to go for the blue. I am a glitter H00R.

Lighting was not my friend today, but here is this stunner, Lady Sings the Blues. It is a deep blue base filled with silver glitter, both small and large pieces of hexagonal glitter. Some people hoped it would look like the elusive Essie Starry, Starry Night; it doesn't really, but it does look like SSN's loud-mouthed cousin, so if you want a blue jelly with some kind of silver glitter, this is your girl. What really wowed me about this shade was the application. I will expound on what it means to be a jelly polish in a moment, but usually jelly polishes require several coats before you can no longer see the nail line beneath it, but not this bad boy. I am a serial three coater, and I simply couldn't justify more than two coats. It applied smoothly and dried very nicely with a coat of Seche Vite. Now, what do I mean by jelly?

This is a little lesson for the people out there who are not as, shall we say, totally crazy about nail polish as I am. A favorite finish among nail fanatics is the jelly finish, which I am demonstrating above by holding jelly (actually it's preserves, but I don't think too many Americans make much of a distinction). You know how jelly is sort of transparent, but you can't actually see through the jar when you look at it? And, depending on the jelly, sometimes you can't even see through it when you put it on toast? But you know, somehow, that the light penetrates it somehow so that it can't be totally opaque? That's what we mean by jelly nail polish. The light penetrates it giving it a kind of squishy appearance, but it isn't necessarily clear or sheer. Some jellies are a little easier to deal with than others. This is by far the best in terms of coverage. Lippmann has some other very problematic jellies like Rehab which is named for a fantastic song and a pretty color, but took me seven coats the last time I tried it to get it to the opacity that I like. And even for me, that's not cool.

So, yeah, I love this polish. It is the awesome. Polish to the People!