Today's manicure: pink and girly!

I've been seeing a lot of pink gradients on the polish subreddit I frequent, so I figured I'd give it a try!

This is a random Sally Hansen Diamond Strength pink (random because the label fell off. Oops!), topped with a bit of butter LONDON Tart with a Heart, and a generous coat of Seche Vite for shine.



I tried a few varieties of this before I settled on this combo, and here's what I learned:

- Super sheer, buildable shades work best. Seems obvious, but I had several failures when I picked a polish that was too opaque!

- Glitter covers a multitude of sins. If the gradient isn't quite perfect, this will cover it up!

I really like this look! It's subtle, shimmery, feminine, and oh so pink.

Turquoise stone nails using China Glaze Crushed Candy crackle topcoat

This is the first time I've EVER put on a crackle topcoat and not immediately reached for the polish remover. I love this look! It's not perfect, the crackle was a bit too lumpy so I'll need to perfect my technique, but I'll work on it for sure :)



What I did:

First I painted my nails with two coats of Nicole by OPI Not a Gold Bigger (the best gold foil EVER)

Then I dabbed on random strokes of Revlon's Copper Penny and butter LONDON's The Black Knight for some sparkle. I then sponged on a few bits of American Apparel's Meteor Shower (I can't believe I found a use for this!), then topped the whole works with a layer of Nubar 2010 for the flakies.

Next, I loaded my brush with China Glaze Crushed Candy, painted on a thick coat of crackle, and made random swipes with the brush to get it to crack in different directions.

Finally, I topped it all with two fairly thick coats of Seche Vite to try and smooth the whole thing out.

Overall I'm pleased with how this turned out. It could use some work, but it was a first attempt so I'm not going to stress too much over it :)

Butter London - The Black Knight & Tart with a Heart

My first ever order from Butter London arrived this week, and I wasn't sure how to choose between the two. So I wore both!

This is The Black Knight with an accent nail in Tart with a Heart. The original plan was to do some konad stamping on top of it, but honestly it doesn't need it.

The Black Knight is a gorgeous charcoal jelly base packed with blue, red, pink, and silver glitter. Probably other colours too if I look! The overall effect is a purplish glitter in a deep charcoal base. Quite sheer with one coat, it was opaque in two! I figured for sure I'd be going for three to four coats for full opacity, but no.

Tart with a Heart is beautiful. I expected this to be more of a Black Knight glitter done in a cream base, but it's completely different. Small holographic, pink, and gold glitter combined with holographic larger glitter, this one's much more sheer and completely different. It took four coats to get the picture below, but three would really have been fine.




Side note: this stuff just drinks topcoat. I put two coats of Seche Vite on top and it's STILL not glass smooth. But I'll forgive because it's absolutely beautiful.

Both colours were very easy to apply with nice consistencies, not too goopy like some glitter polishes, and the glitter spread easily on its own. Definitely a good buy!