Shatter effect nails

Hello!

Today's bite-sized topic is nail art, specifically shatter nail polish. When this trend first came in, I hated it with a fiery passion. I thought it was so tacky! For the most part (lol) it still is. I have come around to the more subtle versions- dark colours with a black shatter topcoat, particularly. So I went out and bought myself a black shatter topcoat and started playing around.

The results are behind the cut :-)





Here's what I've found:

• First and foremost, a shiny topcoat over the shatter topcoat is a must. Otherwise, it looks matte and awful and your nails look cheap.

• OPIs Lincoln Park After Dark (one of my favourite nail shades- a blackened purple) is wasted with the shatter topcoat- there's not enough contrast, and the topcoat just obscures the beauty of the purple.

• Revlon's Midnight Affair (791) however, looks quite nice with the topcoat (it's on most of the nails on the photo above). From far off it looks like a solid, dark nail shade. Closer up, you can see the shatter effect.

• Urban Decay's Mars looks OK, too. It's on the ring finger in the picture above. It gives a bit more contrast than the Midnight Affair.

• Urban Decay's Barlust looks nice with the black topcoat- you get a tortoise shell effect.

• Just to make sure my hatred of bright/light nail polish with a shatter topcoat wasn't completely untested, I used OPI's Birthday Babe as the base. It's a light silver. It looked awful. That experiment won't be repeated.

What do you think of the shatter topcoat?
xo

Anna