I’m not saying I went overboard or anything, but this is like a half-step away from completely rhinestone-covered nails.  I’ve been pulling a bunch of all nighters lately which doesn’t lend itself well to leaning over my hand for hours and painting, but it DOES work really well for layering a bunch of polishes/giving everything time to dry (swack on a coat, work for an hour, repeat, repeat, repeat).  So really this was just me distracting myself all night!

I started with (not that you can even tell anymore, but it’s there) a base of Kleancolor Metallic Black, then put down a coat of Barry M Lavender Hexograms, let that dry, put down another coat and — while it was still wet — dropped some random pink, purple and fuchsia rhinestones from Bundle Monster.  While that was drying, I took a second to appreciate how much it looked like my cell phone case (and yes, I’m a moth to anything glittery and/or purple, it’s a weakness I’m 100% okay with):

Gave that a couple of hours to dry — you know how you get that heavy-nail feeling?  these were dense before I even got to the final steps — and then used OPI Divine Swine to fill in even more glittery goodness.  Here was the thinking:  if I put the rhinestones down early on, I could build up more polish around/over them so they weren’t so exaggeratedly poked up on the nail. After the last couple of coats of glitter, I followed with another two rounds of Seche Vite; for those keeping track, we’re up to seven coats.  Still bumpy as all get out, which I expected, but I had to keep trying to even it a little more, so carefully filed down some of the SV over the rhinestones before piling on the FINAL topcoat.

Look, they’re thick and bumpy and all sorts of crazy… but I kind of love them.  Mostly because they keep glinting up from my (purple) keyboard as I type and it’s delightfully distracting.  And I like ridiculous things.