A British Blogging Christmas - Vic from Glowstars

Hi Goddesses

Today we have a mani from the Queen of Bling, Vic from Glowstars.  I always laugh at how she blings everything up, but there's no denying she's also really talented with a great eye for patterns.

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Well hi there!

I should start by saying that I am so freaking honoured to have been invited to post on the Crumpet's blog. I mean, the Crumpet. It's like being invited to tea at Buck Pal only you feel like you could ditch the saucer and slurp from your cup round here. And you don't have to eat your cake with one of those tiny fork thingies, either.

I originally agreed to be a part of the Crumpet's British Blogging Christmas without really thinking of the implications - I was too dumbstruck to get my head around the idea of doing a Christmas mani. You see, I hate seasonal manis. I cringe every time the Digit-al Dozen brings out another seasonal theme and forces me into submission. I hide from the likes of Bloglovin and Pinterest the moment a holiday comes around and on the big day - be it Valentine's, Halloween or 4th July (especially 4th July - I'm BRITISH, remember) - I defiantly paint a mani that is the complete opposite of the holiday. So you can see why I was questioning my sanity. But, Debs kindly let us choose our own theme within a theme, and I decided to go with an alternative Christmas. This mani is the sort of thing you can wear for deep winter without showing any sort of affection for the holiday season. 

So, let's get started. I wanted to do a mani that you could get a few days wear out of, without getting bored. The sort of thing you can change up with minimal effort when you've got three parties in a row. Hopefully I've achieved this goal. First of all you'll need to grab some sparkly, textured polishes. I'm using the OPI Mariah Carey Liquid Sand Trio Pack #2 which includes mini sizes of Emotions, It's Frosty Outside and Kiss Me At Midnight. There you are; your three days worth of manis has cost you the equivalent of a single, full-sized bottle of OPI polish.

The first step is two coats of It's Frosty Outside, which is a sparkly silver Liquid Sand. I used two coats, but I can't imagine you'll have need for three. As with all textured polishes, skip the topcoat otherwise you'll lose the effect and end up using half a bottle of Seche (I know, I've tried it).

On day 2 you want to get gradienting (it's a real word, I've decided - it'll be entering the Oxford Dictionary this time next year). Because you've already got a good solid base colour laid down, you don't need to worry about hitting the top end of the nail. I cut my sponge slightly longer than the area I wanted to cover with the blue. Paint a tiny stripe of It's Frosty Outside on the top of the sponge and cover the rest with Kiss Me At Midnight. Blend the colours on to the tips of your nails and if your nails are long enough, you might even get away with skipping the clean-up. Because you don't need to bother with topcoat and the Liquid Sands dry quite quickly, this really is a genius mani.

On day 3 you can use another simple addition, this time with Emotions. Take a fine brush and paint a few asterisks over the silver part of the mani. I used four intersecting lines, but with hindsight it would have been easier to use three. You might want to have a bit of a practice at this first as it's tricky to get the right balance between too little and too much polish on the brush - liquid sands aren't as easy to use for fine art as smooth polishes. 

Once your asterisks have had a chance to dry off, add a small dot of nail glue over each one and fix on star-shaped rhinestones. I used clear but this would work just as well with black or even blue. 

So there you have it: a sparkly, winter mani that doesn't scream Christmas. It's as close to Christmas as I'll get this year if you don't count the Digit-al Dozen's Red, Gold and Green theme. I hope you've enjoyed this, and if you give it a try I'd love to see what you come up with.