Orange, crystals and matte

Hi everyone!


Yep, highly inspired title... not! The manicure it describes is a lot nicer though, or at least I think so ;)
Want to see? Here you go:

indoors, no flash

And this is what I did :)

I started out by painting two coats of base coat as the orange polish I intended to use is a notorious stainer so I wanted to prevent that as much as possible. I used two coats of OPI DS Luxurious on my thumb, index and pinky and a coat of OPI Matte Top Coat to remove the glossy shine and bring out the gorgeousness of the gold shimmer, my favorite way to wear this beautiful polish.

I painted my middle finger and ring with three thin coats of essie Urban Jungle and used Luxurious to stamp an image from MoYou London Fashionista 07 on my middle finger. A coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying and protect the stamp and a coat of OPI Matte Top Coat (I'm starting to see a pattern here...) to mattify everything.

Last but not least I stuck an orange Swarovski crystal on my ring finger that matched the color of Luxurious. As I didn't want to paint top coat over the crystal as I usually do with studs I used nail glue to keep it in place.

The polishes:

essie Urban Jungle, OPI DS Luxurious

In hindsight I would have preferred the crystal to be a bit smaller as my nails are still shorties but I really like the combination of all matte and one shiny element. I've found a local store that sells Swarovski crystals apiece for less than $.15 so I bought several colors to play with (you didn't think I could just pick one color, right? I mean... shiny!!). Unfortunately they didn't sell really tiny ones as I would have loved to add a small one at the pointy tip of the stamp so I'll keep looking for a place that sells smaller ones but I'm very happy to have found the ones I have :)

What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Have you tried using crystals for nail art?


Update: two coats of base coat aren't enough to prevent staining by Luxurious... and nail glue is a b*tch to remove!!


Swarovski crystal was bought from Sayila Beads.