One of the things that I love sitting and doing to relax is painting my nails. It took me ages to finally invest in a gel nail kit and when I did I was instantly converted. After the first couple of times, I wondered why I had never invested before. I am one of those people that chips their nails before I have even put the polish away. I am clumsy and super impatient, so never wait until they are dry. Gel kits were like a lightbulb moment for me. I have perfected my technique, so I can easily get them to last for 3 weeks at a time without chipping and have honestly never looked back. I will do a separate post on my technique and products I use, but thought I would show you my favourite item when it comes to gelling nails; nail pigment.
Nail pigment comes in so many different varieties. Being the magpie I am, my favourite is holographic, but you can get chrome, neon and lots of other types too. I have always loved sparkly nail polish, when I was little my mum would always paint mine with one of her glitter polishes that I was obsessed with. As you will know though, they are an absolute pain to get off. That was always the thing that put me off glitters. Fortunately, you don’t really get that with gels, glitters are applied the same way as normal gel shades, so they come off the same way too.
Pigment is super easy to apply, but the effect just looks like so much more effort has been put in. I can’t stop staring at my nails when I use it, as they are just so, so sparkly. Nail pigment is super versatile too, it varies depending on the colour underneath, so the possibilities are endless. The pigments in the photo above are applied over white, black and grey base colours and you can see how the shade of the pink and blue changes with the colour underneath.
I thought I would pop together a little tutorial, so you can see how I use it.
firstly…
I usually start by prepping my nails and making them the shape that I want. I’m actually quite surprised, these are long for me! Normally, I break a nail and then end up making them all short in fury, but so far so good. To be honest, Lockdown means i’m not really doing much, so at least it’s saving my nails. Every cloud. Once prepped, I apply Base coat, cure with my UV lamp and then paint and cure 2 layers of my nail polish colour as normal. I chose a light grey this time around, as I mentioned different base colours create different effects. At this point I don’t apply a top coat as this still needs to be tacky. Ready for..
sparkle time…
With the polish still tacky, it’s time for the fun bit. Each pigment usually comes with a little sponge applicator which makes it easy to apply. The process is super easy, you just dip the sponge into the pigment and brush it onto the nail. Do this a few times to make sure enough pigment is used and then start to buff it into the nail. You will notice that glitter buffs to have a soft tone to it. I usually keep going until the glitter has blended and you have a soft finish. The pigment sticks to the polish which is why it still needs some tackiness to it. Some pigments take a lot more buffing in than others, this holo takes seconds, whereas the mirror effect takes a little longer.
finishing up…
I used the pastel pink pigment on my ring finger and you can see this has a very slight silver tone to it because I used a grey polish underneath. I quite like the effect though. Once all of the pigment is applied, I then brush off the excess glitter, apply the topcoat and cure with the lamp as normal.
This is one of my absolute favourite things to do with my nails. As I said it is so easy to do but just looks so effective. The range of pigments available is just perfect too, there are so many to choose from. I usually just get mine from eBay or Amazon as they are super cheap but really good quality.
Obviously, I am not a nail expert or anything but this is the method I use to apply nail pigment and it totally works for me. I haven’t gone into too much detail of the process I follow to actually gel my nails, as I will cover that in a separate post with all the products that I use.
I’m really enjoying playing around with my nails lately. Do you do your own nails at home or get them done at the salon? ❤
