Week 31: Crackle

Good morning fellow hobbyists! This week's theme on the Year's Challenge is crackle. I tried a bunch of designs out on my nail wheels before deciding on this one. I also realized that while I have two Wet N Wild crackles (Free, Free at Last and You're Too Good For Him), I don't actually like either one. They're pretty colors, but they just don't crackle wide enough to actually show the base color. Maybe I'm applying them wrong, but since I haven't had any trouble getting my new Avon Mosaics to crackle properly, and I've so far hated the application of every other Wet N Wild polish I've used, other than their glitter topcoats, I suspect it's just that I don't get along with WNW polishes in general. :P

On to today's manicure! I've decided to call this Cracked Lava, because at the right angle (which I had a hard time capturing on photo, drat it!), most of my nails really do look like lava flowing under cracked, blackened rock. I love it!

There are six layers of polish here, not counting base and top coats! I started with two coats of NYC Black Lace Creme, followed by three coats of Zoya Opal on my ring fingers, and three coats of Essie LuxEffects Shine of the Times on all the others. This was topped, of course, by a single coat of Avon Mosaic Effects in Black, applied on the diagonal. I think crackle looks best applied at an angle, because that allows it to look more random, more natural than crackle applied on a straight line, which tends to look just like cracked pavement that needs repair. :P

 I took waaay more pictures than strictly necessary of this manicure. I just love color shifting polishes, and I take pictures at every conceivable angle of light, trying to show off the variation! The pictures above were taken indoors, as it seemed to be the only lighting that wanted to show the -red- on film. The remainder of these were taken in the sunlight, which is my favorite lighting for nail pictures. I've taken to taking my camera to work the day after I do my nails, so I can take pictures outside on my lunch hour, rather than taking pictures inside the night I do them.