Reader Request: Teenage Dream over Not Like The Movies

I must confess that it never occurred to me to layer these two shades together, so when I received a reader request for this combination, I was intrigued. Each polish has so much going on individually, that I figured it would be total overkill to layer them, but I’m very happy to say that I was wrong! All swatches are with Sèche Natural base coat and three coats of lacquer, no top coat.

In this first photo and starting with 3 coats of ‘Not Like The Movies’ on all fingers, I then layered one coat of ‘Teenage Dream’ on my pinkie & ring fingers. It doesn’t make for a drastic difference, but you can see how the iridescent hexagonal glitter of ‘Teenage Dream’ sparkles when the light hits it. Other than that, the delicate rose jelly base of ‘Teenage Dream’ doesn’t seem to be affecting the base polish all that much.

In this photo and as always atop the base colour polish, I layered the other two fingers with one coat of ‘Teenage Dream’ because I was curious to see if having all nails done would make it seem deeper somehow, but at this point the one layer of ‘Teenage Dream’ hasn’t changed anything all that much, other than some extra oomph.

Lastly, in this final photo I layered two coats of ‘Teenage Dream’ over the base polish and you can see how the tone has finally shifted. With the addition of that extra coat of ‘Teenage Dream’, it seems to have tempered the grey hue of ‘Not Like The Movies’ and turned it more of a silvery lavender. Even though there is plenty of bling going around, the soft undertones of both lacquers seem to have melded together beautifully. Please click to enlarge the photos in order to see the full effect.

Final thoughts: This was an excellent layering suggestion (thank you, Sarah!) and I absolutely love how it turned out. The silvery base of ‘Not Like The Movies’ adds just enough of an edginess to the overall look to keep it from veering into girly-girl territory, while the generous amounts of glitter in ‘Teenage Dream’ layered on top add a delicate prettiness to the finish – best of both worlds! I would suggest adding at least one layer of top coat (as the glitter pieces leave a slightly rough feel), to add some major shine as well as bringing out the holographic glory of this combo’s finish.