Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A few months ago, I was contacted by Born Pretty Store with the opportunity to review one of their products.  I've been wanting to try playing around with loose glitter and they have a wide selection to choose from.  I ended up picking out some mini round glitters.  I wanted to try something other than the typical hex glitters but I wanted to try something a little more versatile than a specific shape, like hearts or stars, which might limit what designs you can use them with.  I originally was planning to use these in a Valentine's Day manicure, but I ended up saving them for St. Patrick's Day instead.

The glitters come in a set of 12 colors for $7.60.  Each color comes in its own resealable pot.  The pots may seem small but they are packed full of glitter.  I used anywhere from 15 to 20 pieces on each nail for this manicure and it didn't even make a dent in the glitter left in the pot.  They will definitely last a long time.  Click here to view more information on this product.

photo courtesy of BornPrettyStore.com

As you can see in the image above, the glitters are iridescent.  You may want to keep that in mind when deciding how to use them.  For example, I was originally thinking of using the white glitters for some type of Irish Flag design, but at different angles the white glitters reflect back a bright pink color and I didn't want that to throw off the design.  In the manicure I ended up doing, I used only the orange glitters.  But you can see in all the pictures, depending on how the light hits them, they also flash shades of green, which worked perfectly for this design actually!

My base is 3 coats of Revlon Tantalize.  I love shades of green like this!  I especially liked using it for this manicure because, while it is green, it is a bit of a non-traditional shade for St. Patrick's Day.  The application of this polish was super smooth, even though my bottle had a brush that was a bit lopsided.  And it doesn't say anything, anywhere about this polish being scented, so call me crazy, but the entire time I was painting my nails I could smell nothing but sour apple gum!  And the same thing happened when I was taking the manicure off.  So weird!   The shamrock was stamped on each nail using Konad Special Polish in white.  The design is actually from Born Pretty Store's Hello Kitty plate.  But I already owned that plate on my own, it was not sent to me for review as the glitters were.  To make the surface super smooth, I applied one coat of Gelous before applying Seche Vite as my top coat.

The glitters are pretty easy to apply.  I worked one nail at a time and just swiped on some top coat at an angle, then dipped a dotting tool in a bit of top coat to pick up and place the glitters one at a time in a staggered pattern.  I would suggest either using the glitters that stick to the lid first or spreading a little bit of the glitter out on either a piece of paper or a paper plate in order to pick them up.  Any time I tried to pick one up with the dotting tool straight from the pot, there was a static cling effect and I ended up with a little string of glitters.  You want to make sure to only pick up one at a time to be able to place them exactly where you want them on the nail.  If you decide to give these a try, or want to check out some of the other items available at Born Pretty Store, they have provided a code for my readers to get 10% off your order!

*Glitters sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinion.*