One thing we Glitter Girls should have in our beauty arsenal is mastering of a glittery manicure. On grey and wintery days or during the holidays when you want your fingers to look as pretty as the decorations on the tree, there is nothing quite like the glint of glittery nails peeking out from a coat.

Get experimenting with the adorable glitter polishes that much to our delight are everywhere at the moment (I love those by Essie, OPI and Deborah Lippmann), and just have fun – no one ever said glitter should be serious!

Here’s how to do it yourself:

Clean and file nails. This means shape, buff and push back cuticles. (When wearing glitter always keep nails short, neat and rounded so the look stays cute and classy and never verges into trashy territory.) Apply a clear base coat to protect your nails and give the polish a surface to adhere to.

Choose your colors. All you need is one of your favorite nail polish colors and a fun glittery polish to go on top. Color combinations that either match (such as pink glitter on baby pink, silver glitter on dove grey) or compliment (rainbow glitter on red or burgundy, or pastel glitter with different sorbet colors are happy combinations) look best.

Twinkle and shine. Apply two coats of the solid color as a base coat (in this case I used Essie’s ‘Mademoiselle,’ though any pastel pink will do). With your glitter polish you can either do a simple glittery topcoat (one or two coats depending on how dense you want the glitter), a dense glitter (three to four coats for a super razzle-dazzle effect – skip the base color if going for this look), dots, stripes, or a combination of anything that takes your fancy. To get the ombre effect I’ve done here (using Essie’s darling pink ‘A Cut Above’), remove the excess from the brush then just paint the glitter on the tips, bringing it down slightly towards the centre of the nail with whatever is left for a gradual fade effect (I did coats this way so the look was more obvious).

Maintain. Seal with a top coat to make everything smooth (this will also make your polish last longer). If you get a few tiny chips after a day or two, the beauty of glitter polish is that you can easily patch up the area with a teeny bit of base colour and glitter topcoat without anyone noticing.

Get twinkly Glitter Girls!

-By Briony Whitehouse of A Girl, A Style

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