Frankenpolish with Art Glitter
and a Quick Glitter Manicure By Kae Ruess
http://thehungryasian.blogspot.com/

I discovered Art Glitter from my mother in-law, who does stamping and other crafts. I have been mixing my own polish concoctions with them and it has been the best glitter I have used by far!

Mixing nail polish and glitter together can end up with surprising results. It's very fun and easy to do at home with some basic supplies. Here is what you will need:

• An empty nail polish bottle or a bottle of cheap clear nail polish.
• Art Glitter. 
• Ball bearings (BB's). You can find a big box of theses at the sporting goods section for less than 5 dollars. Make sure you buy zinc plated, they should be silver-colored. Anything else may errode into the polish and discolor it. 
• A funnel.  I just tear a small piece of paper and make a paper one, it works great!
• Something to scoop the glitter into the funnel.

I'm using a new bottle of clear polish, so I need to empty out about 1/3 of it to make room for the glitter and other colors. I just pour into an empty bottle. Make sure you put something down on your work surface in case of spills!

Here is my clear polish before I start. If you want to make less half a bottle is fine too, it doesn't have to be exact.

I am making a colored polish here, but if you want you can skip this step and just pour in any glitter mix of your choice. Here I pour a red creme polish into my bottle. You want to leave room for the other colors and the glitter.

2 drops of a black creme.

A very small pour of a dark red jelly. If you can't find a color like this it's definitely okay to skip it. The best part about this is you can mix anything together.

Now put 2 BB's into the bottle.

Glitter time! I am using #79 Black Ultrafine Opaque. Put your funnel in the neck of the bottle, scoop out and pour in 1/4 teaspoon of the black glitter. Now close it the bottle tight and shake! Test it on a piece of paper and if you want more glitter add another 1/4 teaspoon.

The finished polish and on the nail. This is supposed to look like a strawberry.

Another quick recipe:
1 part clear
1 part black creme
1/2 teaspoon of #190 Blue Yonder
1/2 teaspoon of #2 Christmas Red

Pour everything into an empty bottle, put in the BB's, shake like crazy! 

If you don't want to mess around with mixing your polish don't worry! This is a really simple way to get any glitter on your nails.

You can do a french manicure with the glitter. Apply your basecoat if you would like, then just take any clear polish and paint your tip. 

Before the clear polish dries you want to put the glitter on it. I use a brush with long bristles, a fan brush would also be great for this. Don't dip your finger into the glitter, you might get polish in there. Dip your brush in the glitter and pat it on your nail.

This is #242 Lava Lamp. A darker glitter would be much better for unpainted nails. You can do this over black to really make it pop.

Wait a couple of minutes for everything to dry, then gently brush off any loose glitter. Make sure you get all the excess off. Then take your favorite topcoat and brush over your entire nail. If it is still gritty you can do another layer of topcoat.

To show you what the glitter looks over a nail polish color here is a birthday manicure I did. I painted 3 coats of a pale pink creme and topped it with a quick dry topcoat. Once that was dry I made cupcakes using same method as above, painting clear polish and patting on the glitter. I used acrylic paint for the rest of the design.

If you are going to mix glitter with the nail polish, opaque and pearlescent glitter tends to work better in clear polish. Transparent just doesn't show up as well.

You can do some test swatches on a piece of white paper before you commit. Just a few drops of polish and sprinkle glitter to see what it looks like.

A really fantastic tip to remove any kind of stubborn glitter from your nails is to cut a piece of felt into a small square and soak it in acetone (or pure acetone if it is really stubborn) remover. This does an amazing job of removing glitter.

Make sure you are using cosmetic grade glitter like Art Glitter. If you aren't sure, contact the manufacturer. Art Glitter in just clear polish will change the color to match the glitter a little bit, but it does not affect the polish at all and it's perfectly good to use.

The possibilities are endless, let your imagination go wild!

 

Note from Art Glitter: All of our polyester glitter lines are safe for wearing. This includes all of our Microfine line, all of the Ultrafine Transparent glitter, and most of the Opaque Ultrafine line. Please view this PDF for a list of the colors that are NOT safe. Thank you!