Tutorial: How to Fix a Glitter Mosaic Manicure That's Seen Better Days

Alrighty, so you've seen me do quite a lot of glitter mosaics manicures.  They do take a while to do and if you don't do your nails most days like me, you want them to last as long as possible.  One of the best things about them is that they're actually really easy to fix up, if you have the same glitter handy and a little time.

A perfect time to show you the process of fixing my nails is the manicure I did for New Year's Eve.  I did my nails before the party and over the course of the evening, they...had a bit of a rough night.  I'm very hard on my nails - I get tip wear really easily and my nails weren't in the best shape after a week in New York.  So instead of looking like this:

I woke up to them looking like this (brace yourself):

Sadly, this is rough I am on my nails.  Look at that dirty great chip on my index finger, the tip wear, the missing glitter pieces *shudder*.  IT'S OK, I CAN FIX THIS.  How do I know it'll be ok? Cos the first pieces of all five fingers is the final result *OMG TWIST*.

The first step you need is to take your base colour and refresh your tips.  Make sure you wrap the polish all the way around the ends, and a little bit under your nails.  I find everything wears better this way.  It doesn't have to be super neat as we'll be putting glitter over it and a ton of top coat.  Once done, you should have something that looks like this:

Ok, looks a little better now, huh?  Next, you want to find the glitter you originally used.  You can see I'm missing some of the pink glitter off the tips of my nails, and my little finger isn't looking too good.

Getting even better now.  I've added a little pink in there, and refreshed the glitter on my middle finger.  You just use the same technique you did originally, a little top coat and a toothpick.

The final step is the same as every other mani - a ton of Seche Vite and a paintbrush dipped in acetone to clean up the edges.  I've tried a lot of other top coats but keep coming back to Seche Vite as it seems to penerate deeper layers of polish and smooth everything out.  The paintbrush is also the easiest way to clean up your mani.  Just sweep it around the edges and you'll get a nice curve around the cuticle and no stray splotches.  100% acetone is the best, IMHO, because it's just so much faster than regular remover.  Find a small paint- or makeup brush and just sweep it around the edges of your polish, it's easy to do.

Once you do these, you get this!

The Verdict:  Man, looking at these pictures now I still want to clean up bits but it's too late now.  But look, sparkly!  Hope this helps :)