Glitter Sandwich

Hello and happy Friday!  I managed to get the day off today so I went to brunch this morning at m. henry and ate a humongous plate of peach and blueberry blisscakes! So yummy!  I also decided to run to the theater and catch Brave, the new Pixar movie.  It was totally adorable, much as I thought it would be.  I recommend it if you need something light hearted and fun.

Enough about me, let's talk about my nails!  I saw this manicure on The Nailasaurus recently and thought I'd try it out.  A few days ago, I was browsing the shelves at my local Marshall's and discovered some boxes of Jessica polish, 5 bottles for around $6, kind of a steal!  So I grabbed one that had a couple of nudes in it because my stash is woefully low on those.  I'm partial to the brighter the better as far as colors go, so I tend to skip the nudes as too...demure, maybe?  But they are really trendy right now so I figured I ought to nab a few.  Anyway, here's where I started.

 This is what people call a "glitter sandwich" manicure.  I started with 4 alternating coats of Jessica's Custom Nail Color in Skin Deep and Hype.  Skin Deep is a pinkish beige nude with a subtle pink shimmer and Hype is light beige nude.  After those first coats, I added a layer of Wet 'n' Wild's Light with Caution glitter mixed with some Milani Jewel FX in Gold.  Light with Caution has large pinkish, coppery hexagonal glitter with smaller blue and green glitters mixed in.  Jewel FX Gold is a large hexagonal gold glitter.  In hindsight, I wish I'd have gone a bit lighter on Gold, because the pink bits in Caution are so pretty and the gold sort of overshadows them.  Oh, well, live and learn! 

After all of that, I topped the glitter layer off with a coat of Skin Deep again and there you have your "sandwich".  It's a pretty nifty effect as it gives the glitter a matte-ish appearance.  I wore it like this for today and when I got home, I decided to try Nailasaurus's next step; a matte top coat.

I think the addition of the matte coat takes this mani to the next level.  I am unclear why matte glitter is so magical, but it is.  I mean, how can something be shiny and matte at the same time?  And yet, it is!  I must try this with some other, brighter colors and see what happens.  I used Essie's Matte About You here.

Many thanks to The Nailasaurus for her fantastic blog which I enjoy reading!  I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by recreating this look, but it was so pretty I just had to try it!

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment if you feel like it :)