Hi sweeties! Happy Friday! It’s colder than a witches teat here in PA, and I’m just counting down the days until it warms up again. I hope y’all are keeping warm! For today’s manicure, I really wanted something vivid. I didn’t like the base color I chose but didn’t want to start from the beginning, so I ended up layering and dabbing and stamping until I liked it!

So that Julep bottle I’m holding is the polish I used as my base color, Ariana. I originally was going to just wear that alone, but I didn’t like it so much. It’s a berry-leaning eggplant purple with a lot of silvery shimmer, and the formula was pretty crappy – gloopy but weirdly thin, and it took forever to dry. Anyways, I decided that instead of starting over with another mani altogether, I’d just throw a bunch of other stuff on it until I liked the result! 🙂

So I layered Orly’s Purple Poodle over that Julep, and I just love the result! Purple Poodle is this raspberry jelly polish with some purple and blue microglitter, and it really warmed up the Julep polish but still let a bit of shimmer shine through. I know I slapped some other stuff on top of that combo, but you can see it at the base of my nails and behind the stamp.

And can we just talk about those flakies?! I am officially deeply in love with multichrome flakies! I Love Nail Polish did such a great job with this line – I was lucky enough to win 6 in a giveaway, and I bought a few extra as well since I love them so! I chose one that leaned strongly purple/blue (Luna), and it matched perfectly to the base color!

As you can see in that closeup, Luna leans mostly raspberry purple, but shifts to teal, blue, pink, gold, and a smidge of green! In certain lighting, the flakies blend into the rest of the polish but will come alive if you move your hands. I love it!

I love this above picture just for the bottle shot! I wanted to show you different angles so you could see more of the flakie shift.

Products used:

Base color: Julep Ariana… as described above – a yucky no-good polish, but a surprisingly good base for this!

Jelly topper: Orly Purple Poodle… warm raspberry jelly with purple and blue microglitters.

Stamping plate: MoYou London Suki 04

Stamping polish: Essie Nothing Else Metals… a light silvery lavender chrome that is perfect for stamping!

Flakie: ILNP Luna… described and shown in detail above. I just dabbed this over the top half of my nail a few times. It’s amazingly opaque in 2-3 coats on its own, so you see it real well in this mani.

So what do you think? Do you ever do this type of thing for a mani – just layer/ dabble/ stamp and add things until you love it or just have to start over? Are you staying warm this frigid part of winter? Have a great weekend!!