Royal purple & silver nail art

Royal purple & silver nail art

The purple is Golden Rose Fantastic Colour 180 - and boy, oh boy did I spend at least half an hour trying to fix the colours. My camera insisted that I was wearing a bright blue polish instead of this beautiful rich purple (and that I had a serious case of lobster hands).

Hello Berlin!

Hello Berlin! aka rhinestone explosion

I'm off to Berlin in the morning, but before that I want to show you my special mani I did for the occasion. The base on all the fingers (apart from the ring fingers) consists of Sally Hansen Platinum Chrome, Gallery Colours Silver Sparkle and Nubar Hologram Glitter, one coat of each. The symbols I did are a heart, M, a rainbow, the German flag, D, N, the Finnish flag, another rainbow, A and a cocktail glass. Why MDNA? Because it's the title of Madonna's latest album and the name of her current world tour which I'll be attending with a friend! ♥ ♥ ♥

Layla Magneffect Glamour Lilac & Galaxy Silver

 Layla - Glamour Lilac, 1 coat over grey creme

Oh, Layla Magneffects... you're so beautiful, yet my wallet wails at the sight of you. If you're in Finland, the Magneffects can now be purchased in most Sokos department stores at 15€ a pop. Glamour Lilac, a standard silver with pink to green duochrome flakes, immediately caught my attention so I grabbed it and giddily made my way to the cash registers.

Since my first trials with the actual Layla magnet were a big fat fail, I did as Passion4Polish at MUA suggested - first, I removed the magnet from the cap with an exacto knife, and then stuck it on a piece of flexible plastic (there's no need for using glue as the magnet still has a fair amount of adhesive left on it after you pry it off). This way I could bend the magnet so that it better fits the shape of my nail.

As with most (all?) magnetic polishes you'd better let your mani dry for A LONG TIME before applying your top coat. Trust me on this. If not, the metallic particles will bleed and diminish the effect. I think I waited around for about 30 to 40 minutes before top coat.

 

 Layla - Galaxy Silver, 1 coat over grey creme

I also got Galaxy Silver, which has square silver glitter in a silver base. As with Glamour Lilac, this is one coat over a darkish grey creme base. The base colour will show through (at least) these two polishes, especially if you only apply a thin coat of the magetic polish on top.

Black crackle polish over silver

Unknown brand - Black crackle polish over silver

This lacquer is one of my many eBay finds (the seller's ID is lilychenli). Unlike the new Isadora Graffiti polishes that are super thick, difficult to apply and dry in 30 seconds max., this one was thinner than regular polish, much more forgiving in application and took much longer for the cracks to develop, perhaps around 4-5 minutes. I had to wait until the next day before I could apply a top coat or the crackle polish underneath would bleed and ruin the effect.