I have a love/hate relationship with glitter polish. I love it on my nails, but HATE removing it. I’ve actually worn a thin spot in my thumbnail trying to remove layer upon layer of glitter polish. But- it’s so cute and attention-getting and sparkly! š When I teach reading groups and am showing the kids how to print match (point under the word they’re reading) my nails are always distracting them when I wear glitter. Despite the damage to my nails and children’s reading levels, I just can’t say no.
My favorite glitter polish is OPI Sparkle-licious from the Burlesque collection. I actually didn’t even go out on purpose to buy the Burlesque polish, but when I was on vacation in Montana of all places, this polish was in a clearance bin at the hair/nail salon and I just had to have it. The multicolored, silver-based glitter in this polish is densely packed so in 3-4 coats you can have total glitter opacity, but if you use a base color you can have it appear opaque in 2 coats, easily. I sometimes use a base color just to stretch my bottle of polish, but I also enjoy pure glitter.
Sparkle-licious, no base color
In the above picture you can see that the glitter is mostly silver but has blue, gold, and fuchsia in it as well. If you put a color underneath it that matches one of the secondary glitter colors it will make them stand out. I wanted the fuchsia to stand out so, as you’ll see in the next picture, after I applied my clear base coat I applied 2 coats of some Orly neon purple polish. I don’t have the name for the Orly polish because it was a mini-bottle I picked up and has no label. It’s a slightly dark neon purple that dries matte, but any purple or especially a fuchsia color would look great underneath the Sparkle-licious.
2 coats of Sparkle-licious over a purple base color
You can see how much more purple/fuchsia these nails look with that purple base color. Also, like I mentioned before, it conserves your glitter polish and can change up the look of this polish. This would look super pretty over a blue polish, it’d look awesome over black, and if I wanted to stick with the silver dominating I could apply a couple of coats of this over a silver foil polish.
Besides the battle when it’s time to remove glitter polish, the only other bad thing about it is that it tends to just eat up your top coat. Glitter is, of course, rough and creates lots of little nooks and crannies between glitter bits (that’s why it’s so sparkly and refracts so much light!) and the top coat will just sink right into those spots leaving your nails rough with glitter. I would recommend using a cheap topcoat for about 2 coats’ worth, then topping it off with the good stuff to save your top coat stash, and money. I usually use at least 3 coats of top coat with glitter of this magnitude because I like my nails super shine and smooth.
Yes, please or No, thank you
Despite the 2 pitfalls of glitter it’s still my favorite of all polishes, and out of my glitter polishes, OPI Sparkle-licious is my favorite! š It’s a yes (stock me up because I never wanna run out), please!
Polish Me, Please! 