The living daylights versatility post

So I'm still on a recycling manis kick and I decided to add to my MSMD mani from Monday with some glitter namely, OPI's The Living Daylights from the Bond collection. This was the first polish I owned which had hexagonal glitter in and I was drawn to it because it looked so different (this was in the days before I even knew that Indie polishes existed). When I decided to make this post I went for something different, it's a skittle mani designed to show you the versatility of these clear base polishes with regularly shaped glitter. Besides the striping tape I used yesterday to get the shape on my ring finger I have only used a dotting tool (you could use a toothpick) to make this. I put some polish onto a bit of scrap plastic (I use an old lid from a cotton bud box) and then use the dotting tool to hand place the glitter onto my fingers where necessary. If you are starting from scratch apply your base colour and wait for it to dry then apply another layer of base coat and stick the glitter to this while it is still wet. If you are recycling an old mani just put a layer of base coat over it and get going. I use base coat not top coat as it is thinner and tends not to ooze up between the glitter. I'm going to show you the matte pictures because they came out so much better.

So here we have five different uses of the glitter:

Thumb- one coat applied with the brush, this is to show you the normal finish of the polish

Index- stripes of hexagons hand placed with the dotting tool- start with the middle stripe and work out wards from there

Middle- a glitter gradient using the polish brush and a couple of hand placed hexagons just to get it looking perfect

Ring- hexagons placed following the outline of the Art Deco nail art 

Little- I drew on a free form wave pattern with a Barry M nail art pen in silver and then hand placed rows of hexagons following this pattern leaving some of the nail black

And there we go five totally different looks from one bottle of polish. The living daylights contains silver, blue and copper hexagons. OPI has another similar polish in the Euro Centrale collection called Polka.com which has blue, purple and pink hexagons in it but this is harder to work with as it also contains purple micro glitter which is hard to navigate around. There is yet another polish coming out this summer in their Minnie Mouse line which has white, pink and red hexagons in it. The base for this manicure is A England Bridal Veil. If you want more hand placed nail art inspiration check out Polish All The Nails' blog because she is the queen of the hand placed mani and I would never have thought of it before reading her blog.

And here I have put a picture of both manis side by side to show you just how different this look is with the glitter added; someone would have to be paying very close attention (or reading my blog) to realise that I have not taken my polish off to do this look.

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