Nail art: Zoya Purity, Girly Bits January Morning and CrowsToes Triple Black Diamond

I thought I'd try out a bit of nail art, using a couple of indie polishes I hadn't gotten around to using yet. Here's the black-on-white glitter gradient I've been sporting for the past few days.

I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out, since I normally do my gradients from the tips. It was a bit messy, and I haven't done a great clean up in these pics (and my cuticles are horribly dry!) but I'm proud of it nonetheless.

This post is going to be very picture heavy!



For Christmas, I bought myself the Zoya set which contained Gilty, an 18k gold topper. I'd wanted one of the gold toppers for awhile, but the OPI one is very expensive here. So Zoya, which I'd never tried before, seemed like a good deal- Gilty, plus Purity, a white, and Raven, a black, both of which are always super useful colours to have. Also, I love the little box they're nestled inside.

I'd used Purity over Christmas for a couple of manis, and loved the formula, so decided to use it as the base colour, over a base coat of Sally Hansen Miracle Cure. But it needed a bit of extra shine- and that's when Girly Bits January Morning came in.

I'd been lusting after this polish since I started getting into indie polishes, and received it as a Christmas present. When it arrived, I realised I hadn't paid enough attention to the swatches, which had made me fall in love with the polish in the first place- I'd somehow imagined that it was a bit...denser, for want of a better word. The type of polish that could be worn alone, rather than as a topper. Still, I hoped it would look great over the white. I used two coats of Purity, and one of January Morning on top. The formula of January Morning was really runny, so although I'd planned to use a second coat, I decided against it.

I had trouble getting the glimmer that comes from January Morning in this picture, but it's a bit more noticeable in later photos.

I'm glad I only used the one coat, as I wanted to wait until my nails were completely dry before putting on the black glitter, but didn't want to use a topcoat, because I wanted to keep the layers of polish on my nails as thin as possible (otherwise polish has the tendency to just pop off me). I had the afternoon off, so I painted my nails around 3pm, but they weren't dry enough for me to attempt the gradient until after 6- after having to pick up my flatmate and make dinner. I wasn't particularly impressed!

The black glitter I used on top is CrowsToes Triple Black Diamond. It's one my BFF wanted and I wasn't too sure about, but it's absolutely gorgeous in person. It's a black glitter, with a bit of a green/blue and purple in it and just a smattering of holo glitter for extra shine.

I used the brush to build up layers of the glitter. The formula was the opposite of January Morning- quite thick, which worked really well for building the gradient. It dried very quickly, but is very gritty to the touch. I used two coats of Orly Sec 'n Dry, and could have used a third.

Here are the polishes all together. I really like the colour combination.

And here is the finished product! I hadn't cleaned up most of the glitter on my hands at this point- it got everywhere! Next time, I think I'll stick to my usual glitter on the tips, which is a lot easier to clean up!

This picture of my thumb shows the purple and green glitter much better. I like that it's a bit of a 'surprise'- the mani looks black and white from afar, but close up and in the right light, you get the shimmer of the January Morning, and the glitter colours too.

I wore this manicure for two days with very minimal tip wear. However, the glitter by my cuticle was irritating me, and so I'd picked at it a little, and it didn't look the neatest any more. And then, early on the third day, my pinky on my left hand just popped clean off! This isn't unusal for me, and I suspect it might be from having 8-9 layers of polish on.

You can see some of the tip wear here, but also the January Morning shimmer shows off a lot more in this picture than it did when I first painted my nails.

And here you can see the wear on my thumb, and also where I'd picked at the glitter around my cuticles. I didn't realise, until I looked at this picture, how horrible it looked!

All in all, I really liked the look of it- but I'd definitely reverse it next time to make clean up a lot easier. I'm also hoping to try out January Morning some more, possibly on its own to see how it builds up and how opaque it gets. And I really can't wait to think of a way to use the Zoya polishes too!