I helped my friend Sarah review a few products from Born Pretty Store and I used the to create this Polar Bear Nail Art. I used this product to create a loose glitter gradient underneath the design.

Polar Bear Nail Art | Keely’s Nails

The glitter powder picker is a sponge-tipped tool that you can dip into a pot of loose glitter and then tap or shake the glitter onto your nails. It’s less messy than dipping your whole nail into a pot of glitter.

Confession time: I made a couple of modifications to this little tool… When I first picked it up from Sarah the metal tip that holds the sponge was loose and fell off constantly.  That was really annoying and not very useful, so I glued it back on with nail glue and fixed it just fine.  Looking at the images of the original on Born Pretty Store, they seem to show it as detachable, so maybe I wasn’t supposed to do that.

The other modification was after I’d used it.  As I mentioned, this is designed so that you can tap or shake the tool to deposit glitter on your nail.  If you use the tool to dab glitter into wet polish, you’ll end up with a permanently glittery sponge tip.  Ooops! When Sarah got this back from me it was a couple of millimetres shorter. But there haven’t been any complaints so I guess the glue and the slightly reduced tip aren’t too much of a problem.

Polishes and tools

YSL Bleu Celadon (major lemming squished with this one)
Loose blue glitter (I think I got this pot from the Professional Beauty Show in London this year)
Essie No Place Like Chrome
MoYou London Enchanted 06 and 16
Barry M Gelly Coconut

 

Polar Bear Nail Art | Keely's Nails

Polar Bear Nail Art | Keely’s Nails

Polar Bear Nail Art

I applied two coats of Bleu Celadon and then a thin clear coat one nail by one.  As each nail was wet, I dipped the tool into the glitter and tapped it onto my nails to create a gradient from the tip.  I sealed it in with top coat which also smoothed it out.

Once set, I stamped with silver over the top using MoYou London Enchanted 16. I used my UberMat to make the polar bear decals and applied them last. Then more topcoat over everything – these were quite thick nails!