Hand-placed glitter (I)

Treasure chest

I recently bought some loose glitter to be able to try my hand at placing small glitter pieces one by one. It must be said that Polish All the Nails is the queen of this method, obviously having a steady hand and a cornucopia of patience to cover all her nails in mosaics and, as she often calls it, mermaid scales of glitter. Now, I wasn't about to let my first try be a 7 hour sitting, especially not as I have a cold and the risk of sneezing glitter all over the kitchen table is quite high. Glitter is, after all, the chlamydia of crafts. So I decided to just try the method out and see where it would take me.

 Apparently, my mind found itself wandering into the pirate treasure chest domain.The picture doesn't show it off very well, but there's two layers of the fabulous gold glitter that is Deborah Lippmanns Boom Boom Pow underneath the hand-placed glitter. It really gives of a vibe of a chest full of ducats, disseminated precious gems and a necklace of rubys. The grey background helps to make it not over-the-top pirate booty, which of course could be achieved with a gold[glitter] background if one would wish.  

Placing the glitter was a lot quicker than I thought. But then again I kind of work with these things - moving crystals of a couple of tens microns around under a microscope. The layers of polish underneath (two layers of Deborah Lippmann Waking up in Vegas, two of Boom Boom Pow) were so thick and thus slowly hardening that I could place all glitters before they had really hardened, instead of constantly having to add more topcoat. All in all, a very meditative process and a result I enjoyed wearing.  

  

Products used:

Deborah Lippmann Waking up in Vegas

Deborah Lippmann Boom Boom Pow

Loose glitter 

Depend Topcoat

Robson et al., 2012

Sophy Robson for Houses of Holland

Sophy Robson, the queen of nails and monarch of manicures, have a silly amount of impressive nail designs on her conscience. One of the many manis are my all time favourite multi-coloured design she did for Daphne Guinness, which you by all means should check out here.

Anyhow, earlier this fall miss Robson made an intriguing neon tie-dye design for Houses of Holland. And to continue with the good news, she released a video tutorial for it! You can see it here.

So, for this mani, I tried following her tutorial. After a few hours with that mani, I could resist to add some glitter in the form of dots and an accent nail.

Products used:
China Glaze Pool Party

Nails Inc Chelsea Embankment

Nails Inc Chelsea Square

Nubar Hot Yellow 
Depend #035

Dior Blue Denim
China Glaze For Audrey

Pick 'n' Mix

Pick 'n' Mix

A little of this, and a little of that. Lately, I often have a hard time choosing what designs to do and wear. For example, a water marble is always fun, but is it do-all-ten-nails-fun? Hardly. 

The result is a pick 'n' mix, or a "all nails get to be accent nails today!" mani:

Shh, say nothing and no one will notice the chipped glitter on the index finger... DAMMIT

Products used:

Nails Inc Chelsea Embankment

H&M Nailpolish Pink (57587)

Nubar Hot Yellow 

Isadora Wondernail #103

Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris

All That Glitters - Spottie Dottie Dark

Loose craftglitter from Panduro

+ a few hex brew mixes on the middle finger.

Picture Dump (I)

Just a bunch of pictures

Here's a few more or less successful manis from the last few weeks. I haven't gotten around to post them before due to either laziness or crappy quality of picture and/or nails. So please excuse any stray polish on cuticles (eh, eponychium, to be correct), hang nails, annoying instagram filters, etc... Instagram filters are, by the way, a guilty pleasure of mine. But you should know that I try use them to show of the colours as close to how they look in real life as possible.

I really like the ring and little finger here. They remind me of poison frogs!

Water marble on my nephew Jack.

Hey, I meant them to be uneven!

Ooh, I liked this one. Colour themed and with some bare nail on the middle finger.

A variation of this mani. I loved the other version, but this came out a bit too cute and bridal for me.

This is probably the kind of mani I've worn most in my life. It's quick and simple to make, and it shows of some bare nail which I've always been partial to.

Galaxoid

Dots on dots over dotting

Disco galaxy nails? Not sure how to term these, but I like it. The smaller dots are made the Arya Stark way: the pointy end of [a] needle. The bigger dots are made directly with the nail polish brush on a zip lock bag (see picture below). I like using dense glitter such as Nails Inc.'s Chelsea Embankment (gold), Chelsea Square (rose gold) and Electric Lane (holographic) as the middle dot. It's like pretty, home-made jewellery to stick on top of any manicure!

 

 

Figure 1.

Figure 2. Because I'm both lousy with cameras and indecisive.

This old spoon experiment I've made a while back was the inspiration, and this was in turn blatantly inspired by Disco Nail. If you are not familiar with Disco Nail, check it out. There's no nail artist I adore more. By the way, that hole in the middle of the tallest palm tree is no hole but a large rhinestone shot in the one angle where it kind of disappears. Curious!

I love to premake stuff like this on zip lock bags. You can make thick dots and let them there to dry for as long as you want. I've used this trick to be able to make manis on my 6 year old niece, who otherwise will smudge it during the eeeendless drying time. Because of that, I have quite the experience with making tiny ladybugs on zip locks...

Products used:

Nails Inc Chelsea Embankment

Nails Inc Chelsea Square

Nails Inc Electric Lane

China Glaze For Audrey

China Glaze Ride the Waves 

China Glaze Pelican Grey

China Glaze Pool Party

China Glaze White on White

OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!

Lancôme Le Vernis 011 Piha Black

Isadora Wonder Nail #702 

Isadora Wonder Nail #651   

Subtle Gradient

My nails are back!

Slowly but steady my hands and nails are getting back into a form I can dare to show off. The first few days after getting back, my cuticles were so full of small cuts and dry cracks that acetone really wasn't something I longed to introduce to them. Ouch. 

 

Here's a simple elegant mani - a purple to brown gradient with gold glitter on top:

Products used:
Essie Bangle Jangle
Essie Chinchilly
Deborah Lippmann Boom Boom Pow

Stripes (I)

Gloopy stripes

Inspiration: this video tutorial

Just a quick picture post, as I'm currently getting ready for a five week trip to Greenland, where I will have no internet access and officially no polish access either due to limited baggage weight. But the weight of a single, tiny polish bottle has never crashed any helicopters as far as I know... Now to the problem of choosing which one can come with me. Possibly the dark grey Paddington depicted below:

I kind of jelly sandwiched a few of the stripes to add some depth. So, first a base of Paddington, some stripes, My Pointe Exactly, more stripes... I'd love to try this in even more steps when I have some more spare time.

Products used:

Nails Inc. Paddington

Depend Art Liner in white  

OPI My Pointe Exactly

Nails Inc. Chelsea Square

Glitter Bonanza (I)

High grade ore Nails

Inspiration: once again, CND's Tarnished Metal Nails

This is something as unusual as a mani I've worn for two days straight. It did, however evolve a bit on the road:

First, it was simply a black base with some leaf metal in gold, silver and bronze...

...then Nails Inc. Chelsea Square happened.

 And then, the sparkly goodness that is Nails Inc. Burlington Arcade swept me off my feet. The holo hexes and shredded glitter in this polish (from the Nail Jewellery collection) made my mani go from "mildly interesting ore grade" to "close all the other mines, we've got all the metals we need right here". And why, yes, I do probably need dynamite and a staffed drill rig to get this of my nails. 
 
Which version do you prefer?

Holy sparkles, Batman!

Products used: 
Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris 
FIMO Leaf Metal
Nails Inc. Chelsea Square
Nails Inc. Burlington Arcade

Fossil

Rawr.

Inspiration: Carr et al. (2005) (no, not really - more like Spielberg et al. (1993))

Again with the bedazzled pinkie? Yup, that one is staying on until it chips. But at least I have a fossil T-Rex and a ladybug to show you, along with some sparkly Nails Inc. goodness.

One of these days I'll make a ladybug tutorial and take some better pics.

Products used:  

China Glaze White on White

China Glaze Liquid Leather

China Glaze Pool Party

Nails Inc. Bloomsbury Square

Nails Inc. New Burlington Place

Indie Polish (I)

 Spottie Dottie from All That Glitters

Inspiration: gradients á la Layniefingers

Last week I purchased my first ever indie polish - Spottie Dottie Dark from All That Glitters, an all black glitter with small and large hexagons and bars. I love it on top of everything I've tried so far - but the gradient is by far my favourite. My only regret is not getting the white version as well!

On top of gradient and flakies (Essie Chinchilly -> Chanel Holiday + Sephora purple jewelry)

On top of taping (Essie Case Study and China Glaze For Audrey)

On top of french tipped manicure (Nubar Hot Yellow and China Glaze Liquid Leather)