There’s No Business Like Glow Business

I knew this manicure, a purple-on-black gradient topped with blue-leaning, iridescent flakies, was going to look cool, but I had no idea the little blue flakies would pull so much light from the dark polish and glow neon blue! It’s such a cool effect – like tiny LED lights for your nails – and one that remains that way no matter the angle of your hand, the quality of the light or, apparently, your choice of matte or shiny topcoat. Neat!

Here I’ve shown a touch-too-dark gradient of OPI’s purple Do You Have This Color in Stock-holm? over Pure Ice’s Black Out, topped with the blue flakies from Revlon’s double-ended Moon Candy polish in Orbit. And going for two different looks from the same mani, I sealed the whole works off first with a coat of ultra shiny Seche Vite before finishing up with a coat of Essie’s satiny Matte About You. Either way, the light from the iridescent flakes blazes through, elevating this simple glitter-on-gradient manicure above the of-the-moment flakie fray.

Opalesence

This manicure, inspired by opals, my favourite gemstone, is a great example of an easily created bit of nail art where the polishes you choose do all the heavy lifting. To achieve this look, I topped two coats of a sheer, slightly shimmery pale pink polish, Revlon’s Sheer Blossom, with two different flakie polishes, Revlon’s Moon Candy in Orbit, a purple-to-green leaning flakie, and Nails Inc.’s The Wyndham, a yellow-to-green leaning holographic flakie. The overall effect is indeed quite like an opal, and would look totally different depending on how much (or how little) you vary up the base polish and the colour of the flakies. And I just realized I’ve used the word “flakie” about 167 times in this single post alone. Flakie flakie flake! And hey look, there’s a cat fur painted into my nails. Again. Must be a day ending in Y.

But one word about flakie (heh) polishes: They do not dry. Not completely, not ever, not even after you’ve sat very still with your hands on your lap doing nothing like a Victorian lady for six hours straight (true story, although I did watch six very worthwhile hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer during that time.) I don’t know what it is about flakie polishes that causes them to never fully dry (even with a quick dry top coat like Seche Vite over top, they still remain slightly mushy) but of all the ones I’ve encountered, they’ve all shared this similar “quirk.” So use a light touch when applying, and don’t expect your manicure to survive the long haul – this one’s strictly a dazzle ‘n dash.

Sea Glass

Although I remain somewhat unsold on the utility of flakie polishes (polishes with shards of iridescent or holographic glitter in them,) they do create a beautiful, textured sea glass-like look that’s perfection when layered over ocean-toned lacquers.

Here I mixed and matched a few readily available drugstore polishes, both sides of Revlon Moon Candy in Orbit, a double-ended lacquer featuring a dark purple cream polish on one end and a flakie on the other, as well as Hard Candy’s glittery Mermaid Magic and ’80s standby Wet and Wild’s turquoise Caribbean Frost.