True Rainbow Fish Nails

I do a ton of posts with glitter.  That's fine, I love glitter.  What does tend to happen though is that I stick to the little glitter.  There's actually a reason for this!  I hate any manis that don't sit 100% flat.  If a piece of glitter sits up or catches, it's coming off.  The tiny glitter is perfect in that it doesn't catch, always sits nice and smooth.  I was sorting through my bag of glitter (I have a Sephora gift bag that's filled to the top with pots of glitter :D ) and realised I have a really great set of glitters that work in a nice rainbow gradient.  I've been having more luck with getting glitter to sit properly lately so I gave it another shot.

So the trick with working with larger pieces of glitter is to make sure that every piece you apply is tamped down all the way around.  I've had success with first applying two to three coats of a base colour - I usually use Rimmel Black Satin because it cleans up well - and a medium swipe of a non-quick-dry top coat, like Sally Hansen Invisible.  You don't want to submerge the piece of glitter, but you want the top coat to swell up around the sides of the piece.  Make sure you trim any pieces of glitter sticking off the ends of your nail too.  Finally, slap on as many coats of Seche Vite as you can stand.  I've used three here.  Sounds like a lot but Seche Vite dries so fast and seals the tips so well I'm ok with it.  It's been 24 hours with this mani on and I've only lost one piece of glitter so far.

The Verdict: I love how this looks.  It could only be improved with holo glitter but not everything can be holo, dammit Laura! Some people might think I've gone over the top with trimming all the glitter to fit but this is how I like my nails to look.  It's so sparkly and rainbow-y, it's worth the effort.