Epic Layering - for a lazy polisher like me!

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A little background to my layering:

My nails have been a fright of late, due to the far too much swatching, peeling off my glitters (yikes!), and skipping the nail balm/cuticle oil routine. So I needed to keep them nails painted to strengthen them, and stop removing the lacquer every 5 seconds!

How did I manage to keep the same polish on for a full 3 days? By layering another polish on top every day!

Here's what they looked like step by step:
 Day 1:

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

 The Dream Girl from Spooky Bones - a brand I found on etsy - is a dark muted purple shimmer. In low light it looks a lot like the colour of pencil lead with a purple tinge. The shimmer is really pretty, as you can see in the (crappy) photos, it is green and pink and makes what could be a blah colour come alive!
I had a bit of cuticle drag probably because I didn't wait long enough between coats. I just left it like this because  knew I'd be layering it.

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - macro

Next, I applied 1 thin coat of Specialita Hits Phenomena Moonbow on top and put on 1 layer of top coat. Moonbow is a colour shifting glitter top in a clear base. The colour shift is seriously gorgeous in this one! The dominant colour is the blue & green you can see in the centre of the nails and that shifts to purple & pink. But there is also some gold and orange visible at certain angles which just equals GORGEOUSNESS!

I didn't particularly like how sparse the glitter was, but it was getting late so I left it like that for the first day.

Day 2:

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - macro

 So, the next day I added another coat of Moonbow and was delighted with the results. It certainly looked better on the base with more glitter. I only regret not getting any photos showing the pink & purple colour shift better! It's a bit difficult to do using my lamp :( 


Can you guess what I did next?

Day 3:

1 coat Hefesto added to the mix

I added a holographic top coat of course!!! Specialita Hits Hefesto arrived a couple of weeks ago and I actually didn't touch it until this manicure. I think I must have been trying to preserve the tiny 6mL bottle it came in!!! And JAYSUS it looks amazing!!! From an average distance it really looked like a dark purple multichrome linear holographic. Then when I looked close I could see the individual glitters peaking through and all the colour shifting and rainbowness of it all blew my mind!

I really couldn't believe I hadn't done more layering in the past. I'm just seriously lazy. And I adhere to the 'take off the last thing you put on' rule when it comes to clothing, makeup and jewellery because whenever I add that 1 extra bit of pizazz to a mani it usually ends up ruining it! Not in this case though!!!!

Now here are a bigillion more pics for you to ogle!

 

 Crazy awesome, right?!

And here's a bottle shot

L-R: The Dream Girl, Moonbow, Hefesto

I've recently bought quite a few layering polishes (like colour morphing top coats) so I really ought to try out more combinations and share the results with you all.

BTW keeping my nails painted for 3 days straight really helped them so I'm going to try to keep on leaving manis on til they grow out and are stronger!

xxx
NPA