Lacquer Slacker Liz: Different Dimension Holly Up Already

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate and best wishes for peace and serenity to all! We do a fairly low-key holiday here, but Fuzzy does enjoy dressing up the place for Christmas so there are some traditional family decorations here and there around the house. My favorite bit of decorating she did this year has been a new thing, swags of balsam fir draped around the windows in the living room. They're naturally beautiful and smell fantastic!

I'm one of three children born in a span of two and a half years so when we were little, decorating for Christmas was a fulsome, semi-chaotic occurrence. We had a beautiful porcelain crèche that we kids took turns arranging each year and my father would set up the vintage train set that he got when he was little under and around the tree, which was tinseled and decorated to the hilt with all the ornaments we'd ever made in school. I still remember that wonderful old-time electric motor smell -- I love that smell! One essential decoration was Santa's hot air balloon that hung from the light fixture in the hall. It had a little music box concealed in it, and on Christmas morning we weren't allowed downstairs until we heard that music box play. My parents would drag themselves downstairs and fix coffee and we three kids would sit all squeezed together on the top step (the only time we ever willingly touched each other, ha!) and listen to my father guffaw and chortle over the piles of presents in the living room -- TORTURE! When the parents were sufficiently caffeinated, my father would reach up and carefully wind that music box and let it go. The fact that none of us ever fell down the stairs in our headlong decent is proof enough that there is such a thing as a Christmas miracle.

This year I decided to feature some holiday cheer on the blog and ordered this polish just in time to receive it before the 25th. Holly Up Already (apropos much?) was released by indie polish maker Different Dimension as part of the Winter 2014 collection. It's a simple but festive glitter topper containing small and micro-sized metallic red and green glitters in a transparent suspension base. The website listing for this polish shows a photo of it worn full-coverage style and it looked so spunky and celebratory that I decided to go that route with it instead of layering it over a solid color. So my nails are packed with sparkling red and green glitters!

Application went really well. I anticipated making a huge mess with this polish as I usually do with full coverage glitters, but that didn't happen. Another Christmas miracle! The suspension base for Holly Up Already is excellent, it suspends the glitter perfectly while maintaining a fluid, non-sticky, paintable consistency. Glitter payoff is substantial and consistent. I used a mix of dabbing and painting to apply, starting with a ploshed and spread first coat. For the second coat I essentially dabbed around the edges of the polish and brushed the extra inwards towards the center. This improvised technique got me very close to full coverage -- I was thrilled! I painted the final coat on like a regular polish, with dabs here and there on a few bare-ish spots. Holly Up Already dries naturally in good time to a textured finish. To smooth it out I used a coat of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food followed by a generous topcoat of Seche Vite for a glossy, glitter-under-glass look.

Photos show three coats of Holly Up Already over Seche Rebuild treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a surface-smoothing coat of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food and a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Different Dimension Holly Up Already

Except for some sheer areas at the tips, I think this topper did great as a full coverage glitter. Some of my shapes are a little loopy, but that's kind of par for the course here, even with cremes. With the shininess and reflectivity of the glitter, you don't really notice the bare spots and shape weirdness in person, and it looks really festive and sparkly. I'm happy to have one of Missi's creations as the lone representative Christmas glitter in my collection. If you don't have at least one in yours, consider Holly Up Already -- it's got a really nice, easy-to-work-with suspension base and a great glitter to base ratio. I got mine on sale and I bet you can too if you hop to it!

I'll leave you now to your day -- may it be a wonderful one!