Manicure Monday: Nail Art Ripper-Offer

For today’s Manicure Monday, I attempted some actual nail art! A couple of weeks ago, Reddit user chill_out_dont_pout did an adorable mani with geometric shapes and negative space, and I’m totally biting her style. For my copycat mani, I used OPI’s Metallic 4 Life and Essie’s Toggle to the Top for the stripes, Fantasy Makers’s Night Glow as the base, and Seche Vite as my top coat.

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It’s been a really long time since I’ve done anything this intricate and time-consuming. For the past several Manicure Mondays, I’ve just been laying glitter down on accent nails and calling it a day. Inspired by that Reddit post, I decided I would buckle down and do some real nail art. I had the time, and I wanted to use this glow-in-the-dark polish but had no ideas for it, so it was a perfect coincidence. It was so easy to make this pattern my own; I used two glitter jelly polishes I really loved, made one edge longer than the other (by accident) and added rhinestones to the vertices. In all, I probably spent three hours or more on this look.

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Of course, I could have done a better job. My lines aren’t clean or even, and Night Glow was actually a big mess to work with; it was goopy and kind of dried out, so I put some thinner in. It wasn’t enough. I put in more. Even though it felt dry to the touch, I guess the under-layers never fully dried, because even though I waited an hour before I started taping, I still pulled up polish. Thankfully, thanks to a stealthy fourth coat of Night Glow and the power of Seche Vite, you can barely tell!

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Night Glow, as you might have guessed, glows in the dark. However, I am terrible at glow-in-the-dark nail photography, so here are some glow fails.

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Thanks again to /u/chill_out_dont_pout for the nail inspiration!

Swatch Sunday: Fantasy Makers’s Night Glow

I know I said all the unseasonal polishes were over with, but I lied. Swatch Sunday’s subject is a Halloween-themed glow in the dark polish, complete with gravestone-shaped bottle. I’m wearing three coats of Fantasy Makers’s Night Glow with one coat of Alter Ego‘s She Shines top coat.

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Night Glow is a pretty typical glow in the dark polish. It’s very sheer; even at three coats, I can still see my whole nail bed. I’m not sure full opacity could be achieved. The polish did dry quickly and with a gloss. The formula isn’t bad, but I won’t say much about it; my bottle is pretty old — at least five years, if not closer to ten — and it was quite thick when I opened it, so I did have to thin it out. This is probably irrelevant. What really matters is that it glows in the dark. I got one good photo of the effect in action; it glows a vibrant green.

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I love glow in the dark polish. It is so fun and so satisfying to wiggle my fingers around in the dark when I go to bed. My boyfriend think it’s annoying but I love it. It feels a little weird, though, to wear such a sheer color without any glitter or other adornments. I’m wearing practically nothing at all. It’s like wearing a revealing dress, I suppose; when I first put it on, I’m a little insecure, but the longer I wear it, the more it grows on me, and at the end of the night I feel sexy and empowered. The analogy is a bit of a stretch, but I think you get it.

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Final word: the polish isn’t anything special. It’s probably the most available and affordable glow polish out there; I see it everywhere around Halloween. However, the quality is comparable to the glow polishes I’ve tried from China Glaze and American Apparel, so it’s whatever. If you need a glow in the dark polish, this would be a good one, but this particular one isn’t at all a must-have.

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Fantasy Makers is usually available in drugstores during Halloween. I got mine at a costume shop.

I bought this polish myself.