DLC Polish Two Girls, One Imitation

Every polish maven's dream is to have a bottle of Essie Starry Starry Night. Even if you're not going to use it, it's such a high demand polish that you want to find it just to sell it to some fool like me who'll pay out the nose for it. What is it about that polish? For me personally, it's three things.

One, I'm a dark colors kind of girl, especially on the nails. I wear the lighter shades but they're not what I gravitate towards. OPI's Ink was the first color with which I can remember falling deeply in love. Dark red, dark blue, dark green, straight up black, those were always my heart's desire.

Two, I love anything about space. I would have been an astronomer but the math killed me. I really enjoy the beautiful visuals that come from the telescopes we have aimed out there; I can remember cheering when Hubble was finally fixed and when the photos started coming in, specifically the Pillars of Creation, I was awestruck. Not just that, but all of the neat things we've found out there! Other planets! Black holes! I cheered and cried when Curiosity landed, I was totally one of those.

Three, and I'm not going to lie to you, it's the prestige of owning such a hard to find polish. I would never shell out $300 for a bottle (or even $150 for the half bottle that was my first spotting of it on eBay), but I never give up hope of stumbling across it somewhere while shopping around.

Those three things together make this an extremely difficult lemming to fulfill for me. From the moment I saw swatches of it, I was in love, and have searched the internet high and low for a viable dupe that was close enough to satisfy me. And I'm the type of person who, when her heart is set on something, is very difficult to satisfy.

I decided to try my own franken of it. I bought a few things, just playing around a bit to see how it went, and my first attempt was this:

Which is...close. Sort of. Enough to inspire me to go do some homework on some real franken ways and means, buy myself some supplies, and make a real attempt.

Life intervened. Then Dana decided she was going to make some of her own polishes and beat me to the punch. And yanno what? I'm glad.

 
It is a challenge to get a pic that shows just how gorgeous and striking this polish is. I tried every available light in my house in the attempt.

This one is when I was standing on my toilet with my hand all the way up by the light bulb lol

 

That's probably the best, at least until the sun comes out. Make sure you view the larger pic of that to really get in there and see the sparkle. And even this picture doesn't do it full justice. In ANY light, the sparkle catches your eye. The very first day I wore it, four different people had immediate and overwhelming, "Oooooooooh," reactions and to me, that's the sign of a good freakin' polish.

The problem is I don't think that last picture still really does it justice. To fully appreciate it, you have to see it, in motion, see all that sparkle flowing around. And then I realized I could take video of it.

That's love right there. Deep, abiding, heartfelt love. Poetry from a bottle flowed onto my finger nails. I'm honestly not being biased with this, I swear. I started critiquing it as soon as I began to use it but I'm still in love.

So! The critiques, of course. It's thick. And the longer you sit there painting, the thicker it gets. I painted my left then dumped a good bit of polish thinner in it which helped a lot. The left hand had a few nails done in one stroke because of it. The right hand, after the thinner, was three nice coats. It takes a while to dry and since I didn't want bubbles I did wait about five minutes between coats, and that was even after the thinner. I used Avon's liquid freeze on this (which happens to be my favorite quick dryer) because I didn't want any shrinkage and it dried very fast after that. If you don't use a clear top coat, it dries to a mildly rough texture because of all the glitter packed in it. It's not super annoyingly rough. It's also not shiny, so you're going to want that top coat anyhow. And one coat was sufficient, it didn't gobble it all up in the least.

Is it a Starry Starry Night dupe? I have never owned it, of course. I probably never will. All I know of it are the pictures I see on google and based solely on that, honestly, no. The jelly consistency is almost there, a few tweaks to the formula should fix that thickening issue. It's also a bit too blue. SSN seems more towards navy blue sometimes, and more towards purple at others. Navy purple? LOL I dunno. Also, in that last picture it looks like you can see the silver glitter but when I look at it right now, I see blue glitter. Which I'm thinking will work itself out once the consistency issue is handled.

And these things will be handled. I have a direct line to the manufacturer, you know. If you love it right now, do not hesitate to buy it, go send the email immediately (info on the Store Page, or click the tab above). You will not regret it. But Dana is pretty smart in that crafty, creative way that's needed for something like this so I know she's just going to get even closer. Which is why I packed up all of my unused franken supplies and shipped them off to her. Because I gave up. I don't feel I need to make an attempt at my own dupe.

My lemming has turned away from the crowd and gone to have a nap.

Jess