Lacquer Legion: Lucky Star-Dust

I had so much trouble coming up with this month's Lacquer Legion design! The prompt was "Lucky," and while I feel quite fortunate in general, translating that to nails in a way that wasn't cliche kept evading me. My original design idea was "Lucky Star," but when my hand painted stars didn't excite me, I decided to take a more interpretive view of the prompt with a design I've dubbed "Lucky Star-Dust," using some amazing colors that I've lucked into.

The base color on this is A England Sleeping Palace, a stunning plum with a soft scattered holo sheen that is reeeaallly difficult to photograph, but I promise, it was worth the wait. If you happen to follow me on Twitter, you may know that finding this color has been somewhat of an odyssey for me. I fell in love with swatches of it, but being a US lover of the brand, I have limited access to A England polishes. There are two distributors that I know of that ship within the US, Beautometry and Llarowe, and both of them have been out of Sleeping Palace for weeks. Then, by sheer luck, I popped over to the Llarowe page, and it was in stock, just in time to arrive for this prompt! Now, I am not a woman of great means, but I had just unexpectedly come into a small amount of "fun money," meaning that not only was Sleeping Palace in stock, but I was in the unique position to be able to spend $10 on a bottle of nail polish guilt free. If that's not lucky, I don't know what is!






The polishes I used for my accent nail have lucky origins as well. I started out with a layer of Glitter Gal Turbulence, my linear holo staple. This is another hard-to-find-in-the-States polish that I was lucky enough to win in the Adventures in Polishland New Year's Eve Manicure Contest (oddly enough, the other polish I won was Dragon, the polish that hooked me on A England). This created a sheer layer of color underneath to make my glitter accent look more solid. Once it had dried, I slathered on two layers of Julep Joelle.




I've said before that Joelle is possibly my favorite polish, and it's the only polish in memory that I've been in real danger of running out of. Joelle is beautiful, and I almost didn't own it. Joelle was part of one of my first Julep Maven boxes. That month I ordered outside of my style profile because I wanted Misti, a stormy blue-grey, and Joelle was just a tagalong. I like Misti, it's nice, but Joelle became my new BFF the second I put it on. It's a holo glitter in a smoky transparent base- it's perfection in a bottle, and I never would have noticed it on my own. Sheer luck.

Once Joelle had (mostly) dried, I went to work on my gradient. I did a makeup sponge gradient with Sleeping Palace and Turbulence. Turbulence is almost like a superfine version of Joelle, and it's so sheer that it made the perfect near-invisible median between my glittery tips and my sparkly plum gradient. Sleeping Palace applies beautifully, but is an unusual formula in that it paints on completely opaque, almost in one coat (I'm wearing two coats in these photos), but in a gradient, it's very sheer and buildable. This let Joelle shine out from underneath and created the exact look I was craving: a purple mist swirling up on a glowing field of glittery stardust. My Lucky backup design became a look I can't stop staring at.

Want to get in on the Lacquer Legion fun? Post your Lucky manicure to social media using the hashtag #LLLucky today, and be sure to check out all of the other inspired looks!