The Glitterazzi’s Viking Winter

Hiya NaiLovelies!

Today I have not one, two, or three but four firsts for you!

This is my FIRST manicure post on my new blog. Yaay! I am super excited to be starting out blogging and sharing my soak off gel and regular polish manicures with you.

Second, third and fourth (firsts) are as yet untried IBD colours which I have to show you, all on one pretty little skittlette manicure! I say these are untrieds as I haven’t used them on my nails until now - although I have used them on my mum and sister.

I am wearing IBD Viking Winter on my thumb, index and pinky fingers, IBD Slate on my middle finger and IBD Glitterazzi on my ring finger with some rather atrractive Slate undies!

I have had both Slate and Viking Winter since December 2012 (very welcome Christmas presents) and have only just got around to trying them on myself. My sister previously wore Viking Winter and my mum’s most recent manicure was in Slate (I think I secretly wanted to put this on myself after I saw how gorgeous it looked on her!).

So, without further ado…..

First up is IBD Slate, which is a really pretty charcoal grey with a bright silver and blue toned teal shimmer, there may also be a tiny hint of gold in there as well contributes to giving this colour so much depth. The shimmer is beautiful; I think a full manicire of this is in my not too distant nail future. I found the formula of this polish to be very sheer on the first coat but like most gel polishes, this improves with additional thin coats. I used three coats on this manicure but if my nails were longer I think I would have had to use four coats. Slate applied smoothly with minimal shrinkage.

Second, is IBD Viking Winter; this is a deep dark grey crème with blue undertones. I was really surprised to discover during application that this polish has teeny tiny flecks of bronze sparsely running through it. They are not in your face noticeable, but they are most definitely there and a lovely welcome surprise, especially since I’ve applied this to my sister earlier this year and I don’t remember there being any gold present – but it definitely is there in both artificial and sun light catching the flecks randomly creating a really pretty yet incredibly subtle glisten. Viking Winter is applied smoothly with zero shrinkage.

Lastly, I have IBD Glitterazzi; is small black glitter, larger black hex glitters, and holographic flakies all in a clear base with blue iridescent shimmer. It really is an extremely pretty glitter topper. Unfortunately, when it comes to the consistency I had some issues with this polish – it is incredibly thick! I think the problem is caused by the flakies as they tend to clump together on the brush and then again when applied to the nail. I found that warming the polish on my lap during soak off and between applications helped to thin out the base somewhat as did shaking the jiggings out of the bottle! It is important to keep the coats thin. I found that tipping or dabbing some of the polish onto a piece of kitchen towel soaked up the gel base and left the glitter behind which was then easy to pick up on the end of a cuticle stick and could then be patted onto the nail without applying an excess of polish to the nail. The finish of the nails with Glitterazzi was not smooth, it was very textured/bumpy but I only used one coat of topcoat.

I adorned my thumbs with three 2mm silver studs applied in an upside down triangle shape along the cuticle line. I used a new trick of using gel basecoat as the ‘glue’ to hold the studs in place. I picked this nifty little tip from Kim at Ten Little Canvasses and I am pleased to say that the studs lasted 6 days before I lost only one, I then soaked off on the 7th day.

Side note; If I am wearing a colour for the second time or if it is a colour which has already been demonstrated by my mum or sister, change how it is worn when it comes to my turn opting to team two or three colours in the same manicure and/or throw in a bit of stamping to shake things up a little and breath a breath of fresh air into the colour(s).

Ciao 4 Now

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