Glitter topcoats - Part One

So I decided to do a short series on glitter topcoats and why I think they're so awesome. Probably the most obvious reason is versatility. You can turn a more sedate creme polish into a much more eye-catching look with just one coat. It's almost like doubling your collection of polishes with that extra bottle of topcoat!

The glitter topcoat I'm using in today's post is the same one I used on my ring finger accent nail in my previous post, Catrice Cosmetics A Million Styles in Have An Ice Day.

To show a few of the possibilities, I chose (clockwise from top left for all photo sets): Essie - Bikini So Teeny (a pastel), Essie - Sand Tropez (a muted neutral), Catrice Cosmetics - Caught on the Red Carpet (a classic starlet red), Chanel - Vendetta (a dark, vampy color; one coat).

So here's what I started with...

Just polish, no topcoat.

Nice enough colors on their own, right? Now these are the same colors coming up in the next group of photos, with one coat of Have An Ice Day, taken in regular indoor lighting.

Oooooh, glitter!

The topcoat definitely amps up the polishes and they take on a beautiful, fine particle glitter. 

But hang on, it gets better! 

In my previous post I wrote about how in direct sunlight Have An Ice Day takes on a fiery, prismatic shine. There haven't been too many sunny days in Munich recently, but the bright halogen bulbs in our entryway provide a pretty close comparison in the next set of pictures.

WOOOOOOOW, glitter!!!!!

Pretty cool, right? Even still photos don't fully do it justice; it looks gorgeous in motion. That's part of why the photos in the last set all look a bit different from each other, since I was moving my hand around trying to get a photo that captured the light best.

I've worn this topcoat with Bikini So Teeny twice (once on all fingers, the second time with one glitter accent nail) and really liked it, but I was really happy with how it turned out on the Vendetta. It almost looks like a photo of some of the "nebula" nail art photos I've seen, but not nearly as time-intensive!

A topcoat like this would be great not only for evening, but would also be fantastic for a daytime wedding outdoors. Bikini So Teeny could be a cute and easy "something blue"and the Sand Tropez or a similar neutral would be just muted enough even with the glitter to still be festive but not too distracting.

Now go out and grab yourself a bottle of glitter topcoat and start having some fun!

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Orange you glad you got this polish?

Ok, that was an awful pun. I admit it. But I guess summer makes me a little goofy sometimes. All the heat.

Speaking of summer, I'd been looking for a juicy orange polish and picked up a bottle of Catrice Cosmetics Exotica, a limited edition color from their Coolibri range.

My collection of Catrice polishes keeps growing, since they're about three Euros a bottle, they make a ton of great colors and the polish itself is usually very good. The photos I took were three days after I first painted them, and there's almost no wear, including on the tips.

Right hand with glittery ring finger accent nail ;-)

To create this look, I started with my usual one coat of CND Stickey Base Coat.

I then added two coats of Exotica. It has a very fine shimmer in it and applies well with no streaking. The glitter accent nail was one coat of Catrice's A Million Styles Effect Top Coat in Have an Ice Day. I'll do a separate post on that soon because it's probably the most fun glitter top coat I've used. It looks nice here, but in direct sunlight you see this crazy awesome, almost holographic blast of sparkle.

I topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite topcoat.

Aaaaaand here's the left hand.

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