Make it Monday // Opal Manicure

My sister's birthday is in October giving her Opal as a birthstone.  I've always be jealous since mine is a blue stone for December.  You may remember a Christmas post from last year where I asked Santa for assorted rings.  I ended up getting a lovely opal ring ring from Zach for Christmas.  Ever since then I've been obsessed with mimicking the opal stone in a manicure.

I was inspired by this something I found a while ago (around Christmas time) where there was glitter under red nail polish.  It was pretty cool for the holidays but I was instantly reminded of an opal stone!

I've had one attempt before that didn't turn out too well.  It wasn't opal-y enough.  The glitter nail polish I used was silver & holographic where as this polish has opalescent glitter.  To give it a 3 dimensional look, I put a few coats of an opalescent polish in between glitter coats.  This type of manicure works best with a translucent polish.

I love the glitter in the Essie polish.  It isn't round like in other glitter polishes.  The glitter is actually like flecks.  It makes the manicure mimic the actual opal stone. It is gorgeous!

To create this look I used Mint Dream by Pure Ice & Essie's Shine of the Times.  I hadn't ever bought an Essie nail polish before.  I was in fact just introduced to the brand.  This nail polish is really nice!  I do have one that is a nude shade (I forget the name) & I really like the coverage of the polish.  I guess that's the right way to put it? It's not cheap looking & it looks nice!

This Pure Ice brand though, in Mint Dream, I did not like.  I couldn't find the polish I wanted to use for this when I went to do the manicure.  The one I wanted to use was the Sally Hansen brand that I'd used before on the failed manicure.  This opalescent color by Pure Ice just looked a bit cheap.  It just didn't apply the way I would have liked it.  This however looked like a better opal option.  The translucent-ness was perfect for this manicure though.

Any way, this manicure was the first part of my Michigan trip:

Mint Dream & Shine of the Times, plus my favorite no chip top coat/base coat combo from Icing by Claire's made a great opal manicure.  To create the perfect opal stone effect, I did a layer of Shine of the Times between the Mint Dream.  This layering mimics the stone by giving it a multidimensional appearance. 

The process is: base coat-Mint Dream-Shine of the times-Mint Dream-Shine of the Times-Top Coat
(make sure the layers dry!)

I took it off & swapped it for a super neon green in the middle of the week, but I will definitely go back to this another day.  It would be perfect for a wedding if you were the bride or bridesmaid!

Have you done anything experimental with nail polish? I think it's a pretty creative medium!