31DC2014 Day 19: Galaxies

This is one of my favorite days of the whole challenge! I've always loved doing galaxy nails, ever since I first tried them about three years ago. Although thinking of the first time I did these makes me shudder now... I've definitely improved since then!

Polishes used:

China Glaze Smoke And Ashes (black with blue and green flakie-ish sparkles) - base color

China Glaze Too Yacht To Handle (bright minty teal crème) - galaxies

(?)OPI You're Such A Budapest (light lilac with subtle shimmer) - galaxies

OPI Alpine Snow (white crème) - galaxies and stars

China Glaze Frostbite (medium blue shimmer) - galaxies

China Glaze Fairy Dust (holographic micro glitter) - glitter around galaxies

I started off by painting my nails with two coats of SAA and waited for that to dry. Then I ripped a little piece off a makeup sponge and holding it with tweezers, dipped it into a blob of TYTH, and sponged a random shape onto each of my nails. With a new piece of sponge (I used a new piece for each color I used), I dabbed YSAB over only some spots where I placed TYTH. Then I lightly sponged a teeny bit of white only over certain spots of the galaxy shapes. I finished the galaxy shapes by sponging Frostbite around the edges to lightly fade it into the base color (Cutepolish does a great tutorial here). After that, I painted some spots of Fairy Dust around the edges of the galaxies, and dotted some larger white dots as closer stars. I finished with one coat of a fast drying top coat (Essie Good To Go).

While I really love doing galaxy nails, I have to admit that I'm not entirely happy with how these ones came out. I realized after doing these that I prefer to use pieces of holographic hex glitters (I fish them out of Techno by China Glaze) for the larger stars. I did a Doctor Who inspired manicure a while ago where the galaxies I did turned out so much better; I'll post those soon because I really like the manicure as a whole!

Thanks for reading!