Nail Art Challenge #14 - Light Up the Night

A dramatic inky black manicure with a fireworks inspired set of feature nails.

I was going for an explosive firework effect on the ring finger with trailing sparks on the middle and pinky fingers. Sadly any shot I could get in focus completely flattened the fire of the micro glitter, but hopefully the inset gives you a little better idea of the twinkling "spark" effect of that polish. It really is quite pretty in real life.

The Midnight Glitz (middle and pinky fingers) is a combination of large black and pale gold larger sized hex glitters with flat black and holographic micro glitters. Below is a swatch sample with two dabbed layers. I feel a little better about my shots after doing an image search of this polish as it seems NO ONE can get a good picture of it. This is as close as I've seen anyone get.

I always find pairing base colours with (non rainbow-y) multi-coloured glitters to be a challenge. This one seems  to work best with a dark metallic grey.

I don't know how well it would work over a brighter polish and I'm not terribly thrilled with the larger glitters, but it was EXACTLY the combination I needed to coordinate with the larger holo in this manicure. I wish I had used a layer of it under the polish I used for my ring finger. It looks pretty sexy in the bottle so it might be cool on its own if you can manage to build up enough layers.

I will definitely be either thinning the base of the large scale holo glitter or seeking another like it. I love the glitter but the base is like jelly.

Bonus shot: I FINALLY did my toes too.

Lemon Meringue Pedi- Shoes by Børn

Double extra bonus link: This is a shot of all the products I used to achieve the Light Up the Night manicure, including the non-polish pre prep and post mani quick dry stuff.

Nail Art Challenge #13 - Under the Sea

A carefully matched Ombre Manicure in increasingly deep aqua/jade tones.

I guess it's pretty clear I have a thing about this colour! I don't think you could buy a set that close all at once.

I love wearing manis like these and it came out better than I could have hoped, but I'm not looking forward to the upkeep on these fussy satins! I've had the two darkest satin colours *over a decade* and boy was that obvious when I started using it. That dark jade colour fought me every moment. The only polish here under a year old is the glittery accent colour.

I'm glad I got back to these posts, the odd thing is that I actually DID the last two manis but didn't get a chance to take pics of them before they got too messed up.