winter mani

So, today I am posting a mani inspired by winter. I decided that since winter is pretty much out of the way I wanted to get in one more winter inspired look and this is what I came up with. This look just totally reminded me of ice! I loved this look and the pictures just do it absolutely no justice whatsoever. I do have to admit this was one major pain in the ass mani. Just before I started working on it I popped in a Harry Potter movie (because I knew this was going to take a while and wanted to watch something long to keep me entertained) and was still working on it for at least 30 minutes after the movie was over! So, that should give you guys a good idea of how long it took to create this look. With that being said, I will NEVER attempt to recreate this look again, lol.

I used a silver chrome polish for my base and then added one layer of silver glitter over top of the chrome. Then I took the Sally Hansen HD polish in "Laser" and a cosmetics sponge and dabbed the blue polish over the tip of the nail. After that dried I (painstakingly) fished out the individual holographic silver glitters out of a random glitter polish and placed the pieces over where I put the blue polish. I then used these transparent holographic flakies that I purchased from Sally's Beauty Supply, and placed on the silver parts of my nails. This was what really took the longest because they are so thick and have a plastic texture to them that they don't stay down to well. I ended up having to put some clear coat on them and press each piece down with tweezers until they laid flat enough for me to add a coat of Seche Vit top coat. As with my purple and silver holo flakey mani I did a while back it again took several layers of top coat to smooth out the texture of my nails. 

I feel like from now on when I do mani's where there are so many steps involved I will try and film a video tutorial instead of just trying to explain step by step what I am doing. Especially since I failed to take step by step photos, which may have made it easier to understand what I did (but then would have made this post more picture heavy that I feel it needs to be.) So, with that being said here are the photos of the outcome of my 2011 winter manicure!

I tried so hard to capture the holographic goodness of the flakies but alas, winter=lots and lots over cast days.

Here is a video of me trying to capture the holo