Diamonds on my nails!

I have something very very special to show you today.
You know I am taking part of the 30 Days Untried Challenge, right? and last night I showed you green polish. Well, Rachel from Polished Criminails did this real amazing green mani for this challenge. And I loved it so much, that I just HAD to try it too! And while I did, I decided to take some pics of every step on the way and then I assembled this tutorial so you can all see how easy it is and give it all a try!

Taken in direct sun.

So let's begin: I used the holographic silver polish by Pupa (# 030) as my base. Two coats and no top.

Taken indoors under artificial lighting.

Pupa holographic silver shows a very strong linear holo effect but its general look is very flat. I don't know, i like it but... It somehow lack this really great dimention that holo polish usually has.

The good news is - its application is very easy. Despite the small bottle and the round shape of the tiny cap that doesn't really add to its comfort of ise, the small brush is comfortably wide and it spreads nicely on the nail. Also, this is a very pigmented polish and it covers the nail very well in one coat only.
Here you see two coats of course, but if you are careful and don't leave brush strokes - you're good with just one! Drying time is short and happy. And aside for this flatness i talked about earlier, the only down side of this polish is the fact that every scratch is very visible on a nasty way.

Taken outdoors in direct sun.

I prepared a small brush (you can use a toothpick if it's easier for you), my striping tape and the colors I wanted to use. I am using several polishes from a brand called Eveline which I picked in my recent trip to Russia. They all have some holo in them. Some a little more linear and some more scattered, but details on these will be on a separate post.

I prepared my tape by cutting lot's of parts. I used 6 cuts on every nail. You can decide how many you want to use. Then I started applying them to my nail in diagonal lines.
Tip: if you layer them on all your nails at once - which is a lot less time consuming then doing one nail at the time, you should consider positioning them all pointing to one side and then place the crossing tapes - again on all nails. This way it will be very easy to know which tapes are on the top row when you take them off.

On your work surface place a drop of one of the polishes. Some tips for you here:

1. Arrange your polish in order from light to dark. Using it this way will save you the trouble of having to clean your brush between colors. I'm all for easy work you know
2. Use no more then one drop of polish at a time. Its easier to work with a drop outside the bottle then using the polish directly from the bottle. But you don't want the polish to dry or become gooey because then its very hard to paint with it.
3. Use a slow dry polish as much as you can. Its much faster to finish all your nails, at least on one hand, before removing the tape . But you don't want the polish to dry because then you won't get the nice clean lines.

Randomly paint inside your diamond, using your colors. It will save you time if you use the first color on all your nails before moving to the next color.

When you're done - just take the tape off. I found that a tweezers is the easiest way to take the tape off without ruining the polish. Do your cleaning as necessary, top coat your design and show it off!

Taken in direct sun.

A close-up in direct sun.

Taken indoors under artificial lighting.

I hope you enjoyed this gorgeous design and the tutorial. I also made a shorter version, in case you want to save it or share around.