It's Alive!!!

Mad props to my boy Jaysen for incessantly nagging me to wear this mani. Your persistence and genius idea has paid off!

This is three coats of $OPI Full Moon, a glow in the dark white from Halloween last year, with a coat of OPI Black Shatter.

Can I just say that this mani was a major pain in my patuckass? Yet now it is for sure one of my all time favorites.

When I first began to put all this together it was very late at night, in fact, early into the wee hours of Thursday morning. I decided to try my China Glaze Black Mesh Crackle as I have not worn it for a mani yet and wanted to enjoy the difference of how it cracks (as compared to Shatter). The $OPI Full Moon was thick and goopy, a bit of a trick to work with. I thinned it once or twice in the process of applying the three coats. Then, I used SV, waited about 5 or 10 minutes, and began to apply the Crackle.

ZOMG it was a disaster! I watched in horror as the ungodly event unfolded before my eyes. Two, yes TWO of my ten nails cracked and the other EIGHT did not (or did so just very minimally, not enough to even count really). And the darnedest thing is that one of those two nails that did crack, cracked so freaking perfectly I could have cried. I honestly have no idea what went wrong. Maybe I thinned things too much or didn't wait long enough for the SV to dry. Who the heck knows? (If you know, please share in the comments.)

Anyway, I sat in despair for a little while, kind of numb, at about 1:30 in the morning. I didn't really have time to try again and I could not bear to photo or wear that wretched, nasty tar-looking mani around for any amount of time. I took it off, took a shower, and called it a night. Side note: first time in such a long, long time that I've showered and then slept with totally naked nails! It was a really weird feeling and I was so scared I would break a nail.

I set my alarm early enough so that I could do something with my nails in the morning. I wasn't sure what to do, but in the morning I decided to just do the whole thing over but with OPI Shatter instead, and hope for the best. Huzzah and hooray, because as you can well see, the Shatter did not disappoint!

Long, boring story, but I hope you enjoyed it all (at least the pictures)!

Oh, and if you are wondering how to photo glow in the dark, I will tell you a little about that. I used the manual mode on my Canon PowerShot S400. 1 minute exposure with macro zoom, night-time setting, and white balance 1. No flash, of course. You have to anchor both your camera and the hand you are photographing or it will turn out blurry. It took me a little trial and error to figure this all out. :)

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