Sparkly Circle Glitter Nails Because I Have to Match Chalkboard Nails!

For the longest time, I've admired Sarah's work over at ChalkboardNails.com.  Her technique is flawless, her photography is flawless and I basically hate/love her for being so amazing.  So I was just casually reading Tumblr last night and I see a post of hers, a gorgeous mani with holographic charcoal glitter for her 17th day of the 30 day challenge.  I squee-d a bit then once recovered I clicked through to her site.  There, right at the top, is this:

If there's one day to tackle a glitter placement manicure, it's the "Glitter" day of the 31 Day Challenge. So I put on my big girl pants and said a prayer to the god of glitter placement, Polish All the Nails.

Like, just kill me now.  I was so excited I fluttered a couple of laps around my apartment, woke up my boyfriend to tell him then tracked down all the places she posted it and gushed praise all over everything.  It's so excited, I can't really words good right now.  It was already 11.30pm at this point but the evil part of my brain that doesn't like me sleeping thought it would be good idea to do a circle glitter mani too! With the smallest circles I have!  Cos sleep is for suckers!  I'm tired :(

It was a hard choice with my glitter. Of course I went for the small one because I'm crazy.  To start, I applied three coats of Urban Outfitters Storm then went to work with an orange stick and my current cheap top coat, Love & Beauty Top Coat.  Bear Grylls kept me company as I stuck all my glitter on.  I went back afterward to fill in the gaps around my cuticles and tips.  It makes me so happy that Sarah did the same with trimming pieces to fit.  I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes total coverage.  She even trimmed studs to fit!

My poor attempt at doing Sarah's pose.  I don't have the right camera set up :(

The Verdict:  I'm so happy right now.  My nails are sparkly, everyone is lovely, all is right with the world.  I don't care how late I stayed up and how tired I am now, all is well.  SPARKLIES FOR EVERYONE!

Black and Gold Glitter Placement Art Deco Nails that I'm Angry At.

I've had this little bag of gold holographic square glitter sitting on my desk for a little while now, taunting me.  "I'm not that small!", it says. "You can totally start a mani with me now, at 11.45pm, and you'll totally be done by 1am!".  IT'S A LIAR AND I SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO GLITTER.   I was talking to my new friend Antonia and she had the great idea of doing an art deco mani with glitter instead of tape.  See how these two things came together?  Yeah, well, I love the idea and hate the glitter.  And my execution. 

My usual tactic with glitter is to start with three coats of base colour to give myself a nice deep starting point, then lay down stripes of top coat and stick my glitter on.  This bloody glitter is so small that this doesn't work.  You get too thick a base and it just disappears and is generally uneven.  So as well as being so small it sent me cross-eyed, it can't even stay straight.  I had to baby my top coat with the thinnest coats.  This just isn't as crisp as I'd like it to be.  It is sparkly but as soon as I took these photos I wanged my thumb so it's all warped and then broke the corner off my middle nail this morning.  I swear this whole thing is cursed :C

The Verdict:  I like the idea here but my execution sucks and the glitter is just way too small.  I'll try this again with bigger glitter, see if I can't get patterns like this going for a better art deco mani.  Sorry Antonia.

The Most Glitter Feasible to Fit On My Nails

I don't even know how to introduce these any more.  It's a lot of glitter.  Like, a lot.  I was showing off my glitter stash to instagram yesterday and realised I had more holo glitter than I thought, in the smaller size that fits with my matte and metallic rainbow glitter.  So of course I'm going to do something excessive with it.  Cue the pictures!

I know there aren't too many people out there that would spend so long gluing 150 pieces of glitter to each nail.  That's ok.  It's sparkly and that's enough for me.  To do this, if you're curious, uses my usual process.  Three coats of black polish, thin strip of cheap top coat down the centre of your nail, line of glitter - this is the place you want to focus on getting everything evenly spaced and straight - then build out each side.  Top with a top coat and you're done.  Sure, there's a lot of time in there but rainbow sparklies!

The Verdict:  I know a lot of you don't spend this long on your nails in a month.  That's ok too.  I like to be the one that puts the time in, is a bit crazy with the glitter.  Makes me happy.  And sparkly.  My preferred state of being.  Yay glitter!

Rimmel Barmy Blue with Gold Holo Glitter Dots

I swear I'm a bit broken.  I get home from my weekly Tuesday movie (yay /r/torontoevents!) and have my exciting Dollish Polish package waiting for me.  Eleven polishes!  Including the gaming collection I've been lusting over for, like, a year!  But no, midnight is a silly time to do just a simple glitter swatch, it must be sparklier!   And more time consuming!

I guess I could have worse comfort zone than glitter.  It's been a reasonable amount of time since I used my gold holo circle glitter so that was the winner.  I started out as usual, with two coats of Rimmel Salon Pro Barmy Blue, a gorgeous blurple creme.  The good thing about this medium-large sized glitter is that you can use the base colour as the adhesive, it's so quick to do.  I painted the third coat, then went to work with my glitter and orange stick.  You have to be careful with the circles, they have a tendency to stick together.  For my cuticle pieces, I waited til then end, cut a bunch of pieces in half with my sewing scissors and stuck them on with top coat.  The edge pieces I just left to overhang, then I trimmed the excess off.

The Verdict:  I really like how this came out.  Gold and blurple always look amazing together and sometimes it's nice to have a simple glitter placement mani.  I'm finding that Lemony Flutter is really helping my nails as well.  I have really dry hands and messy cuticles I have a hard time leaving alone.  It's even faster to do the other hand: same third coat, just pick up some glitter on your finger and place randomly on your nail.  No one will be able to tell, I swear. 

Last Week Wasn't Sparkly Enough So MORE HOLO!

Ok so I did this mani last weekend.  It was good, but it could be sparklier.  I know that was a lot of glitter last time but JUST NOT SPARKLY ENOUGH.  So realising I now have the full rainbow of holo colours in my small hexes, of course I'm going to do proper.  Sparkly.  

I tried to do this at a reasonable time last night but that meant applying glitter while watching the last episode of Breaking Bad and that clearly wasn't a good idea.  So late night glitter it is!  I think you know how to do this by now (see here if you want a tutorial) so let's assess composition and placement.  What bugs me, looking at this closely, is that the spacing isn't consistent between my fingers.  My thumb and ring finger - being done first - are loosely spaced but the other three fingers are closer together.  I don't like the difference.  This is what you get from doing glitter while tired and not taking out a colour or two for shorter nails.  I also which I hadn't added the silver.  Cover it up, and the rainbow is much smoother.  I know you'll think I'm nitpicking but I've done so many of these by this stage there isn't any harm in critically evaluating my work.  Fortunately, it is rainbowy and sparkly, so there's that.

The Verdict:  I like this, save for the reasons outlined above.  It's sparkly!  No macro photo today because apparently that's too hard for me to do, four times.  Sparkly!  Rainbows!

Ocean Mermaid Nails!

I was contacted by someone from Glitties.com recently, offering to send me glitter to review.  Of course I'm up for that!  My jam is making patterns with glitter so I was super happy to see so many different glitter colours in the same size and shape.  I'm like a crackhead for holo glitter, so the gold, silver, turquoise and light blue 3mm hexes were of course going to be my first choice.  SO SPARKLY. Let's take a look at my latest mermaid nails, shall we?

Working with large pieces of glitter like this can be tricky: you have to make sure no bits stick up, that you work right to the edges of your nails and that your top coat covers evenly.  I've found that starting with three coats of your base colour - in this case I used Essie Dive Bar - gives you a nice deep base to press your glitter down.  I started each nail with a column of glitter down the center, starting at the cuticle and building up.  I then built out each side, using pieces I cut in half with a pair of sewing scissors as necessary to get a clean edge around each cuticle.  You know, the usual.  For the ends of my nails, I just trimmed off any overhanging bits.  It's best to finish off with at least two coats of Seche Vite, making sure you wrap your tips with each coat.  BAM, SPARKLY.

The Verdict:  Love the glitter, love the holo, love the colours.  Happy Laura!  Even though I picked off a bit that was sticking up and annoying me then went home and fixed it at lunch.  SPARKLY!

A-England Bridal Veil with Circle Glitter Dots!

Can I ask you guys a question?  What do you like to see here on my blog?  Do you like swatches, glitter placements, taping, acrylic free-hand painting, dots, watermarbling or a general mixture?  Cos I do a lot of glitter placements, obviously, because that's what I like.  Do you like them too or should I make an effort to do other things?  I'll <3 you forever if you leave a comment below.  

With that being said, let's take a look at another glitter placement! At least it's with a holo base colour, and half moon chevrons!

I felt like using an A-England polish so I used three coats of Bridal Veil.  It really only needs one and a bit but you guys know I like a deep base for my glitter.  I then went to town with an orange stick, gold, silver holo and blue circle glitter from LoveNailz and went to town with my top coat that is currently half Love & Beauty top coat and half one that came with a set of nail stickers I got a while back.  Bad at being a top coat but good for being a glitter adhesive.  I started with the usual column down the middle then filled out each side as appropriate.  Then Seche Vite.  DONE.

The Verdict:  This is nice but nothing earth shattering.  I've accidently had it on for two days as I fell asleep on the couch last night and didn't do my nails as usual.  I don't like having the same nails two days in a row.  It is sparkly, and holding up well, at least.  

This is What 640 Pieces of Glitter Looks Like On One Hand

So I got some glitter in the mail last week from Glitties.com.  In it, was a bunch of glitter colours small square glitter in a mixture of metallic and holo finishes.  You surely know what's coming right?  With a long weekend of not much happening because I'm Australian and have no family in Canada?  That's right.  ALL.  THE.  FREAKING.  GLITTER.

I posted a picture of this on Instagram earlier this morning and the response was predictable: awesome, but who has the time?? I DO.  I will sacrifice as much time as I need to to show you maximum sparklies!

Right, so I did the usual start, three coats of black polish.  My top coat is running low so I tried an experiment with the glue that came with my nail foils which is pretty much just PVA glue.  It worked ok, and was good for not creating build up but gets glue everywhere.  If I had to rank adhesives, it would go new cheap top coat, glue, old cheap top coat that's gluggy, Seche Vite.  You will cry trying to use Seche Vite to stick glitter on.  Use it for when you're done.  Anyway, so usual technique with the glitter which is to start with a column down the middle of your nail then build out each side.  With so much glitter, do very thin stripes of top coat at a time.  It gets very thick very quickly and your glitter can look uneven.  For the ends of my nails, I stuck the pieces on then trimmed them when they dried.  I cut the pieces beforehand for around my cuticles. 

The Verdict:  I wish my gold glitter was properly gold, I wish I'd added that extra bit of glitter on the ends of my index and middle fingers, I wish I'd cleaned up just a bit more but otherwise I guess it's ok :P.  It's just when you spend this long - I'm not even sure how long really, at this point - you want it to be perfect.  NEXT TIME I WILL HAVE PERFECTION.

White and Gold Glitter Nails!

Do you know how hard it is to write another glitter intro?  Like, sure, I haven't used this glitter before but you've seen this with different colours.  You know, this might not be a bad time to just talk a little about my camera setup and how I'm happy I've finally found a way for the holographic rainbow in my glitter to show up.  I have quite a complicated setup for my photos.  I have a Canon T3i DSLR with a matching 60mm 1:1 macro lens.  This means I can get realllllly close up photos, like the ones I take of my thumb.  What this also means though is that I have to get really close to my nails with a big camera, something that's super difficult to light.  So I have a lightbox.  That's fine, but it gives out really even light which eats sparklies.  To compensate for THAT, I have a ring flash on my lens.  Until recently, when I put fresh batteries in it, I didn't realise it was cranked way down.  So I put it on full brightness. FINALLY, SPARKLIES.  It does make my skin look awful but if you focus on just the glitter, we'll be good.  So that's why some of my pictures look weird.  But sparkly.  Anyway....

I tried a new white base for this mani, the white end of a Revlon Nail Art Neon duo polish.  Turns out that two coats gives you a really nice, even white, which is a lot more difficult to achieve than you'd think.  Using a slow drying top coat, I did the usual stripe down the middle and center colour of glitter.  If you're careful with the spacing up front, it's a lot easier to just keep it going over the full nail.  A couple coats of Seche Vite and you're done.  

The Verdict: Turns out there's a reason lots of people have been doing white and gold nails lately, it's awesome.  And sparkly.  So there's that :)

Sunset Mermaid Nails for My Instagram Meetup!

I'm going to do my normal intro but I have to tell you about Saturday just gone.  I'm sure a lot of you will understand that it can be hard finding real-life people to go nail polish shopping with.  Rarely can you state polish as your sole shopping goal because most people just don't understand.  Not this Saturday!  I took a chance and posted to Instagram about going polish shopping at the Eaton Centre here in Toronto.  I was so excited to have two awesome ladies show up, Lindsay and Kristin.  We had the most fun afternoon shopping for polish, culminating in actually being able to buy the 22 mini set of Sephora X polishes because we could split them three ways!  Of course I had to do ridiculous glitter nails, I had to maximise the attention I can get in real life!  Let's take a look at my sunset mermaid nails, shall we?

I didn't have a ton of time to do my nails so I focused down and attempted to do a large hex mermaid nail, in under an hour.  I started with three coats of Essie After School Boy's Blazer - I just can't seem to stop using it.  Makes for a nice black alternative.  Once done, I did my usual stripe of top coat - at the moment it's Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Invisible - and laid down my centre column of glitter, starting at the cuticle.  I then filled out each side.  Once I'd fit as many full pieces in as I could, I used the scissors on my Swiss Army Knife to cut various pieces in half to fit in the gaps around the edges of my nails.  The tip pieces I just let hang off the edges of my nail, then trimmed them off.  DO TWO COATS OF SECHE VITE NOW.  NOT ONE.  YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR EDGE PIECES OTHERWISE.  

The Verdict: Look how cute we are!  Yes, I am including myself in that because I am adorable.  I love how we all put in extra effort to meet each other.  I also am happy with how sparkly I managed to make my nails in an hour, despite how many sparklies I lost while shopping.  Yay nail polish!