Tags
beauty, bling, blue, dance, glam, glitter, grooming, manicure, nail polish, nails, opi, performance, salsa, seche vite, shopping, turquoise
My team’s almost all left the country for Berlin! Just me and a few others the last ones standing and leaving tomorrow night. But what trip to perform overseas would be complete without a little bit of a special touch of drama?
Every time I travel for a big dance event, I try to get something special to celebrate the occasion and make myself look/feel more like a dancer. Sometimes, its a pretty henna tattoo that I can show off only clothes that you can get away with at a salsa event. Other times its coloured hair extensions that make me ridiculously easy to recognize on the dancefloor in a sea of strangers. I’m not sure I will have time to do any of that before getting on the plane tomorrow, but the least I could do was get my nails done up nice for the performance.
Our costume is a black turquoise ensemble, and to match that, I always do a sparkley ombre nail in blue and green. It looks great and it really REALLY simple to do. I’ve received so many compliments that I’ve actually genuinely lost count, all for a 15 minute do-it-yourself job! So I thought I’d share a quick how-to here.
I start with just two colours by OPI – Blue My Mind, a stunning, almost electric royal blue, and Catch Me In Your Net, an aquamarine-green full of sparkle and glitter.
Both colours look great on their own, but layering them gives things a whole new dimension. I start with a good base coat, and then paint on Blue My Mind as a base colour. You will generally need at least 2 coats, as the pigmentation in this dark, shimmery polish isn’t very strong.
Once that’s dry, I layer on the glittery Catch Me In Your Net, starting from halfway up my nail and continuing to the tips. You want to make sure that there isn’t too much polish on the brush especially for this first coat, so that the gradient on your nails from blue to green is gradual, and you get a nice ombre effect. From here, I do another coat but this time starting closer to the tip of the nail, and continue to build on layers till the coat of glitter appears as a solid, metallic finish at the tip of my nail. Finish off with a coat of Seche Vite, and you’re all blinged out and ready to rock!
If you’re looking for a cheap place to pick up OPI nail polish in Singapore, I choose to get mine from Dyon International, who have a stall at the weekend flea market at *Scape. I think they’ve recently gotten a proper stall there as well, but I’ve yet to check it out. They have an INSANE range of OPI polishes, with normal ones going for S$10 flat (what a steal!). They’ve also got a ton of other great nail products imported from the States – like Seche Vite, which is a total manicure must-have.
Hope the tutorial and tips were useful! More next week when I’m back from Berlin!