Swarovski Crystal Nails - Inspired by Pinterest

Hey there!  To continue my week of past Digit-al Dozen themes, today I have a mani that was inspired by Pinterest (our November theme) but that I didn't get done in time for it (because I didn't have the all crystals in time).  As soon as I found out how much blingy-er Swarovski crystals are then regular old rhinestones, I knew I wanted to do a full nail of them.  So I channeled my inner Glowstars (our bling queen) and got to work on these that I ended up wearing for days!

You can see the pin that inspired this look here.  I couldn't find out how they were originally done so I messed around and found some polishes that seemed to work.  My nails seem miniature compared to the ones in the photo though!

To do these I started with two coats of Loaded Lacquer Coconut and then, on all but the accent nails, sponged/brushed on Sally Hansen Blizzard Blue.  I picked that blue because it's very sheer but still shiny.  It's pretty useless to wear on it's own but it worked for this.  On top of that I sponged on some Cirque Magic Hour and then added a coat of Glam Polish Glimmer to give it the iridescent glitter look.  

Then I went to town with the crystals that I bought from Artbeads.com.  I used Crystal AB crystals here with the sizes of SS5 7 and 9.  They look a bit less dramatic in my photos than they did in real life.  In real life they were diamond-y sparkly goodness!  So much so that I bought even more Swarovskis after doing these.  I should now be set for bling for ages so you should expect me to be using more of these sometime soon.  

After wearing this, all I can say is thank goodness there's peel off base coat - that thankfully didn't work too good since I wanted to get my money's worth out of this mani and wear it for a couple of days!  

'Til next time...