Hello again people. As I mentioned in my last post I was gonna go out to dinner the other night and was thinking about doing some gradient nails. I decided instead to jump on the bandwagon that is galaxy nails and I really liked how they turned out. Problem is, my camera is so terrible it won’t pick up glitter, so I’ve spent the last two days trying to get decent pictures for you. You may notice that my photos have different backgrounds? This is because I kept rolling around facing the ceiling, the wall, the bed, trying to get a decent picture for you. It was to no avail. So today’s post is gonna text heavy with explanation. So my dearest apologies for the many paragraphs, but bear with me and I’ll try to compensate for my terrible pictures with my terrible writing skills. That sounds like a good plan, right?
So here they are. This kinda gives you a basic idea of the colouring and suchlike, but what it doesn’t show you is that my nails are coated with OPI Pirrouette My Whistle, a very fine silver microglitter laced with larger pieces of circular silver glitter which looks divine for this manicure. Seriously, it’s like it was made for galaxy nails.
This is me trying to get a shot of the glitter for you, hence the blurry pic. See a whole bunch of little white/grey/silver/blue dots where the shine line on my nail is? Every one of those is a piece of microglitter. *SWOON*. I feel like I have the milky way on my fingers! But the glitter is so fine and nice that it doesn’t overpower the actual design underneath it. Normally I buy China Glaze, but here I think OPI has ’em beat.
Onto the tutorial!
First, paint your nails with a base coat, and then completely black. I used a cheap black polish from what I am calling (with no disrespect, honestly, I don’t know what else to call them) ‘Asian Stores’. They are stores in the mall that seem to sell EVERYTHING. Paper cups? Yep. Kid’s Halloween costumes and toys? Yep. Makeup? Craft supplies? Kitchen Utensils? Yep, yup and yesindeedy. And everything is under about 10 bucks, mostly around the $3 mark. The polish I get is $3. And they are always, without an exception I’ve ever seen, run by Asian people. I have to say Asian because even though I think they are Chinese I’m not entirely sure and I’d hate to be so ignorant as to pretend I know and then get it wrong. We have three such stores in my local mall and I love every one of them. They are my go-to for so much.
ANYWHO, back on the actual subject, once your nails are dry it’s time to get out your sponge. Most people use a pink in their galaxy nails but I used Navy blue (another cheap one), shimmery purple (Grape, Set, Match by OPI) and the occasional splash of Ruby Pumps by China Glaze. By the way, if you are looking for new colours to try, Grape, Set, Match and Ruby Pumps are to die for. They look fantastic as a full manicure or in nail art and are worth checking out. The last polishes I used were an opaque silver shimmer, although I used it very sparingly so you may not need it, and Pirouette My Whistle.
So firstly, take your sponge and your navy blue. If I did this again, I’d probably put more effort into being a little more accurate with my sponging since my nails are so small and sometimes it kinda covered the whole nail and didn’t leave much black. You want to cover a third to half the nail, so if you need to clamp a little bit of your sponge in tweezers to get accuracy, do so now. Paint some navy blue polish onto the part of the sponge you will use, then dab it onto a piece of paper/plastic plate/whatever you want so that you’re not putting HEAPS onto your nails. You want it to sponge on lightly in a kinda dappled way. Now pick a spot on your nail and sponge away! I suggest varying the places on your nails where you do this, so sometimes on the centre, sometimes at the ends, the sides, etc, so they don’t look too uniform. You want the polish to have more coverage in the centre of your chosen area, so make that area a little thicker. You may need to get more polish on your sponge, so just repeat what you did before. When this is done, wait for it to dry.
Next, take your shimmery purple. I suppose regular purple would work fine too, I just love glittery things =)
You are going to repeat the steps above but with the purple, and over the navy blue. Sponge it on into the centre of the navy blue, leaving some blue around the outside. Depending on how opaque your polish is, you do NOT need to be heavy on the purple for it to be visible. I’ll let you be the judge of how much to use, but you’re definitely going for a light, dappled sponging effect here, not a block of purple. To create variety, on some nails you may wish to put the purple somewhat off-centre, so that it covers one side of the purple but not the other. Again, this is up to you.
Once the purple is dry, look at dabbing a little red on maybe 4 or 5 of your nails out of your ten. And again, it depends on how opaque your polish is but I mean a LITTLE. Imagine you are trying to paint a faraway cloud of tiny red stars. This adds a little colour variety without overpowering the other colours. And you want to sponge this on very lightly in random places. Sometimes where the purple and blue meet, sometimes elsewhere on the nail, but only about 4 nails out of the set, and only on one place on those nails.
Once dry, it’s time to put on the silver. Basically, follow the exact same directions as the red, but sponge it into a little uneven line, like you’ve got the milky way going across that part of your nail or what have you. Try to do it on maybe one or two nails with the red on, and the 3 or so without. If you have the purple to the side of a nail, the centre of that purple is a good place to put that silver line.
Once dry, finally paint over with your silver glitter. Any silver microglitter will do. Now marvel at the pretty cosmos you’ve created, and feel super proud because you’ve done a good job =)
OPTIONAL: At this point you can put in two or three bigger pieces of silver glitter per nail, if you have it. If you choose to do so, place them around where the purple meets the navy, or around the silver lines.
Now coat with a top coat and you’re done! This manicure is relatively easy but it takes time and patience, and if you’re like me you’ll keep jumping back a step to try and make it perfect, but it’s important to remember that these nails don’t need to be prefect or even to look great =)
For the future: EEEEEEEEP! Do you know what that sound is? That is the sound of utter excitement. I have new polish coming in the mail! EEEEEEP! I got OPI start-to-finish and China Glaze I’m Not Lion for myself, and China Glaze Custom Kicks as a Christmas present for someone. I’ve wanted a decent base coat and topcoat for ages since I’ve been using $3 ones, and finally I can afford it! Also, it has been months that I’ve had my eye on I’m Not Lion and I finally bought it! EEEEEEP! And I’m about to eeep with excitement again because next week my bestie is buying me Winter Holly And Glistening Snow from the China Glaze holiday collection! EEEEEP! I’ve already got my Christmas mani planned out and I can’t WAIT to show you guys =D
So, once I’m Not Lion comes (probably tomorrow) I’m gonna use it to do butterfly nails, and of course I’ll post it on here for errbody to have a look. I haven’t had the money to get new polishes for a while, so this has made me a very happy girl =)
I’ll see you next time
-floturtle.
Floturtle 