{clockwise from top left: my nails, Lyndsey’s, Chelsea’s, & Chelsea’s nail pens}
If you’re in a reader/RSS feed, click through. You’re going to want to see the above photo.
Saturday night, as my friends and I were sitting around watching Kelly make her fabulous risotto and drinking prosecco with passionfruit juice and raspberries (yum), we decided to put Chelsea’s famous nail pens/polishes to use and give ourselves fancy manicures.
Chelsea was really wanting to do glitter french tips, but nothing too neat or perfect. After googling several DIYs and trying a couple of techniques, we thought that maybe the glitter in the nail pens was too fine/small for what we were trying to accomplish. But I decided to keep trying. Here’s what I did:
I painted my nails China Glaze Spitfire (2 coats) and let them dry. Then I grabbed the dark silver/gray glitter polish, and did a medium-thick coat in a horizontal swipe across the very tip of the nail. It was pretty much a perfect straight line, and thin in width. After allowing that to dry, I did a few short, vertical strokes on the top 1/3 of the nail, making sure to cover the original line. The result was a darker color where the polish had two coats, on the tip of the nail. I let that coat dry completely, then did one or two extremely light, vertical brushes over about half of the nail, fading into the previous coats.
Basically, the idea is that the tip of the nail has three coats, the part right beneath that has two, and right below that there is a very light couple of strokes so that it fades into the color of your nail and nothing looks too perfect. I dubbed it the “Ombré Glitter Nail,” and ended up doing it on myself, Chelsea (base color: OPI Dutch Tulips), and Lyndsey (base color: OPI Evening Seduction). As you can see above, it looks different depending on which colors you use. I’m sure others have already done this, but since I had trouble finding DIY instructions and ended up figuring it out myself, I thought I might as well post it here.
If you decide to try this, link back so I can see!
Have fun and happy painting.
Note: I wish I would have taken step by step pictures, but alas I did not. I thought about doing a step by step tonight, but here we are, over 4 days later and my nails still look pretty good with only a couple of chips. Maybe the extra glitter on the tips helps with that?
Comments on Ombré Glitter Nails
From Molly:
This is FANTASTIC! I love it. I love my little accent polka dot nail but I do wish I’d have made you do mine too. Because those are so pretty…
From Marlena:
Love love love! I’ll have to give this the old college try. And I really need to get some of these nail pens.
From Katherine:
These are amazing!!! I lovelovelove Lyndseys! I want you to do mine now, kthanks!!!
From Chelsea:
I’m so glad you figured it out. I think I can do it on my own, I hope… Or else you will just need to come over every weekend.
From Reen:
I just need actual nails now and I’ll be able to do this! Gorg.
From Drea:
This is my absolute favorite nail look lately. I’m obsessed with nude nails and silvery glitter ombre on just the ring finger of both hands. This is the only manicure in history that I have ever repeated two weeks in a row.