It's a Teeny-Tiny Warped Universe

My friend V, whose nails have previously graced these pages, and are likely to do so even more often in the future, works in the Physics department of our University. They've got their biiig yearly lecture today and she wanted a manicure to do it justice. The topic is "The Warped Side of Our Universe: From the Big Bang to Black Holes and Gravitational Waves" so of course I had to try my hand at galaxy nails!

I used a base of Sinful Colors Secret Admirer, topped with a coat of China Glaze Some Like It Haute for multi-colored stars in the background. Beyond that, I used too many colors to remember (though if you're really curious, my stash isn't that big, and I could probably figure it out; just ask.) Two or three blues, two purples, two reds, some Pure Ice purple sheer glitter (ooold bottle and name label long gone) and Splash, and topped off with Milani Whitest White for some dotted stars, a few drawn with a detail brush, and both constellations. I even stuck a few individual pieces of flakie out of Essie Shine of the Times on there in a few places.

I sponged tiny bits of one color at a time semi-randomly to some nails and not others. I specifically chose reds for her right-ring finger based on this picture:

Otherwise, I just had a variety of space and nebula pictures in my head when I sponged colors here and there. ^_^ Here's a gallery of her galaxies!

You can really see where I placed the Shine of the Times flakes on that one if you expand the picture, but thankfully it's much more subtle in real life.

For some reason, every picture I took of the thumbs came out with that yellow overtone, and most of them were a little blurry. Ah, well. I tried to portray one of the galaxies as being side-on, and the other at more of an angle, but I don't know if that came across very well.

We had a fun evening, and I don't know if you can tell, but I've actually made inroads into how dry her hands are! How? Well, my hands aren't particular about what moisturizer I use. My skin is naturally oily, and I have only had to worry about dryness during the extreme winter months (though I'm making sure to use moisturizer every time I use acetone or nail polish remover, to make sure that doesn't change!) so I tend to just pick up moisturizers and not remember how or where I got them. I have a sample sized tube of Gold Bond Ultimate Healing skin therapy cream with aloe, and that's what I've been using most of the winter any time my hands needed some moisture (and yes, I still have that sample sized tube in my purse, though it's getting kind of low.) I don't know if I picked it up at the grocery store at some point in the sample/travel section, or if it came in a mail package as a free sample when I bought something else. No telling. But I used it on V's hands when I first started doing her nails, and she was shocked within minutes by how much it helped, so she bought a bottle herself to have at home.

I've got yet another sample bottle of some-or-another moisturizer that I got as a free sample from Vitacost that I'm currently using to moisturize cuticles during manicures, and we always pay extra attention to moisturizing and massaging her cuticles, but she's been using that Gold Bond regularly, and I think I can clearly see the difference!