Chrome stamping over glitter bling nail art

Hey y'all!

Once again, another holiday has completely snuck up on me, and for no good reason other than I've just been in my own little world, but that's okay.  Last year I was quite surprised to discover that Mardi Gras isn't a "thing" as we 'murkins know it in the UK, but they call it "Pancake Day" and the premise is pretty much the same.  I got my ingredients together over the weekend, and tomorrow I'll be griddling up some fluffy pancakes for dinner, because yum!  While today's nail art isn't exactly traditional for Mardi Gras, I think the festive flair and spectacular blingyness make it totally appropriate for living it up on Fat Tuesday tomorrow.

This nail art was actually a great excuse to use a couple of untried indies and some new (to me) chromes that I picked up in another blogger's sale.  After being so bummed out that I lived in the wrong country to purchase any of Sally Hansen's Color Foil collection last year, I possibly went into a chrome/foil overdrive and have purchased far more bottles than I care to count in the past 6 months of anything with a foil/chrome finish.  I will probably wind up destashing a lot of it soon, because seriously, no one needs this much chrome polish. 

L-R: Sally Hansen Aqua Chrome, Orchid Sapphire Chrome, and big matte, Nail Pattern Boldness Clairvoyant Visitor, Laquerlicious Sapphire Glaze

Starting off this bling parade, I first applied two coats of Sapphire Glaze to my ring finger, and three coats of Clairvoyant Visitor to the rest of my nails.  Sapphire Glaze is a lovely blue jelly packed with blue, teal, fuchsia, and purple microglitter, and sprinkled with teal and (what looks like) pink hexes.  While indie jellies can be a bit thick and hard to work with, it spread really nicely on the nail and I didn't have any issues with it.  Laquerlicious polishes are going to be a bit on the hard-to-find side from this point forward, having rebranded as Polish 'M last month, but you might get lucky with indie stockists and ebay. 

Clairvoyant Visitor, however, is still readily available and is SUCH a fun glitter polish!  It's packed with silver microglitters and pink and fuchsia mini-hexes, and builds to opacity in 3 thin coats.  I had absolutely no problems applying this one, either, and I'm really sad that I waited so long to actually use it, since I bought it almost a year ago, I think. 

After sealing all that glittery goodness under a matte top coat (because all glitters must be matted - it's a thing!), I was left with an *almost* textured base, upon which I stamped with my chrome finish polishes off the QA76 plate.  I wish that I'd reversed the stamping colors, though, just to add some contrast, but hindsight is... you know.  However, to show off those gorgeous glitter bases, I grabbed some macros for you!

I actually liked this so much that I wore it for 3 full days (on BOTH HANDS), if you can believe it.  Part of that may have been down to anxiety about having to remove all that glitter, because I don't have good luck using glue bases over my acrygel overlays.  However, as they say in N'awlins, "laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Hope you're all off to a fantastic week.  Have fun overindulging tomorrow, and I'll see ya Wednesday!