Fire-y Hand-Placed Glitter Gradient

It was a lazy Friday night of watching movies, so I decided to go with a more time-consuming nail art project. I have always been inspired by the amazing hand-placed glitter art made by the blogger of Polish All the Nails. I have a small selection of hexagonal glitters, and I decided to use red, orange, and yellow glitters to make gradients on each nail. It took some time and patience, but it was actually pretty fun to do while just lazing around watching a movie!

Here are the supplies used for this mani:

Base Coat: Seche Clear

Polishes: OPI - Toucan Do It If You Try

Tools: Medium Hexagonal Glitter - Red, Orange, Yellow

           Toothpick

           Nail File

Top Coat: Seche Vite

After the base coat, I put down one coat of the orange OPI nail polish. I had a little trouble deciding what polish to use under the glitter since my glitter isn't very opaque. I ended up choosing a color in the middle of all three colors to aid in the transition for the gradient and not have any one glitter color stand out too much.

I then worked one nail at a time. I added a second coat of the orange OPI polish and used a toothpick to pick up individual glitter pieces and place them on my nail. I started at the base of my nail with two rows of red glitter. The next row I mixed orange and red glitter, then added one more row of orange glitter. The following row I mixed orange and yellow glitter, then finished off the nail with yellow glitter. 

I worked through all of my nails and then topped with a very generous coat of Seche Vite. To fix any glitter hanging off the tip of my nails, I used a nail file to file the pieces down flush with my nail. Then, I sealed the tips with Seche Vite.

I think the gradient effect came out pretty well! I actually can't stop checking out my super shiny glittery nails! My next plan is to find glitter that is more opaque and true to color when reflecting light.