Mani swap: Nude flakies, black holo chevrons and scaled gradients

Today I have for you a mani swap with Danele of Lowcountry Lacquer. She is most active on Instagram, and so I was happy when she asked me to do a #maniswap because I just love her fresh take on the chevron! She is always doing up awesome clean yet edgy mani's and chevrons appear to be one of her fav things. I obviously gravitated towards her nude flakie and black holo chevron mani cause, I mean, flakies and holos??? Drool.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Danele took on the tri-coloured scaled gradient challenge and replicated my curved all-Essie scaled gradient. How nice are those vibrant colours on her?! Makes me look like Casper. In any case, I had a lot of fun replicating her chevron mani using chevron Nail Vinyls because I got to play with flakies, glitter, and a new (to me) Colours by Llarowe black holo. I didn't have China Glaze's Fairy Dust, otherwise my mani replication would have been nearly using the exact same polishes, so I had to settle for some crappy Sally Hansen Fairy Dust imitation.

All of these pics were taken indoors in my quasi-studio, using two 5200k 28W CFL bulbs (no lightbox or diffuser).

Look, I did both hands! I wore this look to the office for a week :)

1 MIN OR LESS VIDEO TUTORIAL:

(see also 15sec version on Instagram)

Note that in the video I'm applying the chevron nail vinyls several at once and then removing and replacing every other one - this is to ensure an even space is created between each chevron vinyl. I always use Glisten & Glow HK Girl top coat before sticking on any nail vinyls after letting the base layer dry/cure for about 10 mins. This speeds up the process and prevents polish from peeling up after removing the vinyls. Once I layered on the black holo, I removed the nail vinyls promptly while the polish was still wet. Let sit for about a min and then apply your final topcoat to avoid streaking.

Polishes used:
- OPI 'My vampire is buff' (totally forgot to include this in my polish line-up pic.... woops)
- Colors by Llarowe 'Black gold, texas tea' (black holo)
- Essie 'Shine of the times' (shifting red-orange flakie topper)
- Sally Hansen 'Diamonds' (iridescent white micro glitter)