31 Day Challenge - Day 2: Orange

I had a much easier time with this mani than I did with yesterday's challenge. Don't you just love it when you have an idea in your head, and it turns out looking exactly as you had planned it to look? Yeah, pretty awesome feeling.

This is a "jelly sandwich" technique, where you literally sandwich a glitter polish between an opaque polish as a base and a jelly polish on top. The effect it creates is one where the glitter looks suspended under a gelatin surface. I used Essence - Wake Up! for the base colour, a mid-tone bright orange creme which was opaque in pretty much 1 coat, but I used 2 here just for full opacity.

To that, I then added a coat of a Color Club polish which I don't know the name of since I purchased it in a duo set and those never seem to have the names on them. It's very much along the lines of OPI - Rainbow Connection although in this one, all the glitter pieces are the same size. This glitter was a little difficult to work with. Although a lot of glitter was distributed on the nail in one swipe, the glitters tended to bunch up together as you stroked the brush on the nail creating two edges of glitters on each side of the brush. I had to push around and place the glitters a fair amount to redistribute them evenly across the entire nail bed. If anyone knows the name of this polish, please post it in the comments below!

I then topped it all off with OPI - Y'All Come Back Ya Here? from the Spring 2011 Texas Collection. It's a jelly polish, or what OPI likes to call them "sorbet" polishes, which lends a stained glass-type effect to the nails. This is two coats, and the polish gives a translucent, stained look without being streaky or patchy. I personally love jelly-finish polishes.

Overall, I really love the end result of this mani. Because I put the translucent orange OPI polish on top of the multi-coloured glitters, it gave the glitters almost a duo-tone look of green and gold glitters only. It lends this manicure a very fall-time theme instead of looking like confetti at a birthday party.

I hope you all love this look as much as I do, and I'd certainly love to hear your feedback on it. Thanks for reading, and see you all tomorrow with my yellow-themed look!