Glitter Gradient Manicure

I wanted my nails to match my sparkly shoes and sparkly mood yesterday as I went out to celebrate my birthday with my favourite friends. When I happened upon Rimmel's Disco Ball polish I suddenly thought that glittery tips would be a fun direction :-)

My first nail tutorial in ages! Click here to see other tutes that I have written.

The idea is to make it look like you have dipped the ends of your nails in glitter, this works with longer square or oval nails, I hope you'll give it a go!

1. Start with a base coat of a bright colour. This look also looks fab with neutrals! You'll need to find a glitter with a sparkle that matches your base coat.

2. Here's a close up shot of my glitter. Disco Ball by Rimmel is a lasting finish shade and I chose it because the silver glitter has a blue sheen.

I was a little disappointed with the distribution of glitter in the base. This polish offers a very subtle look with just one coat and none of the slightly bigger pieces that bring glitters out of that retro, 1990's look that they can have sometimes. The blue I used is Barry M Cobalt Blue 291.

3. I would highly recommend that you wait for the base coat to dry thoroughly before moving on to the next step - you're going to use a whole bunch of thin layers next and you'll greatly reduce drying time if you wait at least 20 mins between base and glitter. Paint just your tips to start off. If you have a glitter with some bigger pieces, use your brush to pop them in this section. I painted about the same size area as a I would with a French Manicure.

Here is a close up of the first layer of glitter. One of the really awesome things about this manicure is that because you are layering lots of polish at the tips, you reduce the risk of a breakage during the wear. I know I have a split in one nail so I still have this design on right now.

 

4. Wait five minutes and then do another coat of glitter, this time going a little further down the nail. You can see from the two pictures above how much extra needs to be painted with each coat!

5. For a finely dispersed glitter like this one, you will need to do about 5 coats over all. Make sure the layers are thing or you'll get a gloopy final look. Bigger glitter will not need as many coats, I have Barry M Rose Quartz which I often do this manicure with over a neutral base and it takes 3 coats for the tips to look totally covered.

 

 

Use a top coat or you'll have a grainy, bumpy finish!

 

Hope you love this fun sparkly look, are you going to give it a go?