After purchasing countless bottles of glitter nail-polish that simply don't give enough of that "mega sparkle" effect, I decided to take matters into my own hands and glitterify my nails myself using some inexpensive craft glitter. Here's a step-by-step tutorial of how I gave myself this sweet little manicure and I'll include comments on how I would do things differently next time. Please excuse the poor picture quality- I can't seem to locate my point-and-shoot so I had to resort to using my crappy cellphone camera. :p
The cast of characters- for the glitter portion, all you really need is some loose glitter (I got mine at Micheal's) and some clear nail polish/ top coat. Oh, and grab a sheet of paper because you'll need that too (unless you want glitter to fly everywhere). While your at it, grab a few q-tips as well. You'll see why soon.
I didn't want all of my nails gilttery; I just wanted one nail on each hand as sort of the accent mark to my manicure. As you can see I painted the rest of my nails this pinkish coral color, and if you'd like to do that as well, feel free to choose any color nail polish (preferably cream-based).
First, apply a base coat on all your nails. I just used a random clear polish that I had lying around.
I'm using sinful colors' "thimbleberry" polish on most of my nails and chose silver glitter for my index finger (left hand) and my ring finger (right hand).
Here's my freshly painted nails-minus the index finger. Now, wait for this to completely dry before you attempt putting glitter on your accent nail or else the glitter will stick to the other nails. Sounds obvious enough, but some people (me) need another reminder. Better yet, do the loose glitter step first (see below), clean up (trust me, it will get messy), and then paint the rest of the nails your desired color. Phew! Moving on.
Cut open your pack of loose glitter. Be careful not get too excited from the sparkles because it will fly everywhere. Ahem.
Paint your chosen accent nail with clear polish.
Put your desired nail over a sheet of paper and sprinkle the loose glitter on top. At this point it should look like a unicorn threw up on your finger. That's okay though, just shake the excess glitter off gently and it'll start looking better.
Repeat with the other chosen accent nail on your other hand. Yes, I do realize that my hands are not very photogenic.
Now's the time to grab that q-tip I mentioned earlier and clean up the area around your cuticles. In a perfect world the glitter would easily come off of the area around your actual nail, but glittery seems to be quite the clingy type so you're gonna need the q-tip's help. I recommend wetting one side of the q-tip, running it around your cuticles, and it should pick up the glitter easily. You can catch the remaining glitter with the other dry side.
Next- and this is super important- seal the glittery-ness with your trusty top coat or any other clear polish, preferably one that dries quickly. Try to apply it a bit thicker than usual so the glitter won't simply hang on to your poor nail polish brush. Apply generously (but not too generous-you don't want a pool of nail polish) with quick strokes.
Last but not least, paint another layer of top coat on (to really make the glitter stay in place) and touch up the rest of your nails.
And voila! There you have it, a nice at-home manicure that actually looks decent! No more paying 10 bucks for a bottle of glitter polish that just leaves random specks of glitter on your nails. I want it to SPARKLE, baby!
Hope this post was somewhat helpful! Thanks for reading~
<3, Ezzie
