Shellac Glitter Nails

MUST HAVE SPARKLES!

There is this awesome fad going around that has many different names. Rockstar Nails, Glitter toes, Glitzy Nails… and so on. Basically it is an acrylic gel with glitter cured into it with a hard polish on top to make it smooth. This is a great trend but it has three downfalls. First, the nail must be filed down so it will adhere, in turn, damaging the natural nail. Second, it is very hard to remove. It must either be filed off or grow out. It can also be chipped of piece by piece, which also damages the natural nail. Third it cannot be duplicated as a manicure because of the flexibility of some nails makes the gel pop right off. The trend is so adorable that most are able to look past the negatives.

I have found a way to fix all those problems! I thought… why not use shellac as a base and top coat for the glitter? The Shellac polish I used was Hotski To Tchotchke and the glitter was Lapis by Martha Stewart. I picked two colors that closely resembled each other.

So what I did first was prep the nail like I would for a regular shellac manicure, then I applied the base coat and cured it for 10 seconds.

After that, I painted a thin layer of color on the nail (a color that would match the glitter I wanted to use). Before I cured the shellac, I powdered the glitter on the nail lightly but evenly on the nail bed then lightly patted it down into the polish to secure it before curing.

I tapped off the excess glitter and cured it for 2 minutes.

After the nails set for 2 minutes in the lamp, I brushed off the excess glitter with a brush and put two coats of Shellac top coat on with a 2 minute cure in between. I finished the nails off with a quick rub down of alcohol to remove the sticky top layer and BAM… GLITTER SHELLAC NAILS!!! They look absolutely AMAZING and my sister is going to wear this blue color to match her Highschool Homecoming Dance.