NOTD: Lynnderella Mercurial

I've been after Mercurial for a while now. I didn't order it way back when Lynnderellas first went up for sale, and since that time it's been more difficult to obtain them. Luckily I was able to go in on an order with a friend, so Mercurial is finally mine mine mine all mine.

 

Black, silver and lavender square and hex glitter in a sheer gray base with lavender/teal shimmer. Yes I said teal. It's hard to see in the bottle but that's what I'm seeing over the base color I used, so I'm sayin' it.

 

Now originally this is not what I was going for. I wanted a gradient-type look, with the glitter clustered at the bottom of my nails, but it didn't work out. Maybe 2 out of 10 nails looked the way I wanted them to. So, I went back and did a second coat of Mercurial to spread things out a bit.

Oftentimes with glitter polishes like this I have a hard time picking a good base. I try things I think will look good but something gets lost in translation. I'm better with dense glitters, where the base just sort of fills in the blanks, but with these more random glitters I have a deficiency. I feel like I chose well with Rescue Beauty Lounge Stormy, though.

I used one coat of Palladio Fuse bonding base coat, two coats of Stormy, two coats of Mercurial, two coats of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite. And what do you know, it actually dried. The danger for me with manicures this thick is that in a day or two I will get an overwhelming desire to start picking at it, because they tend to peel off in sheets. I got in a bad habit of doing this with a couple manicures in a row and it did Very Bad Things to my nails. So once the urge to pick pick pick starts that's when I'll know to haul out the acetone.

 I'm pretty pleased with the smoothness I was able to get with the two coats of Gelous/one coat of SV. I hate, hate, HATE gritty glitters, I have no patience with them whatsoever and this has stopped me from buying dozens of nail polishes, particularly lately. The China Glaze Prismatics, WnW Be Jeweled, the WnW holiday glitters, OPI Burlesque...hate. I cannot stand gritty feeling nails and in the event that Gelous/SV doesn't work, well, then I've just wasted a lot of time and effort putting on a disgusting-feeling manicure.

Sorry to be so strident but we all have our pet peeves...sandpaper nails is mine, I guess!

Anyway, I have run into this with Lynnderellas and I find that doing as few coats as possible (one, if at all feasible) and doubling up on the Gelous under SV works fairly well. I've never tried her Glitter Tamer so I can't speak to the effectiveness of that. I do think that the results you get with Lynnderellas tend to be worth the effort.

Do you have any tricks for smoothing out gross, gritty glitters?