Hidden Neon

Every year in the town I live in we have the Trade Fair. People set up booths in the local arena to promote their businesses and products by giving people samples, discounts, info, leaflets, and to let them see their products first hand. I seriously considered setting up a booth for my nail business, but it cost too much. Anyway, one booth was selling Migi Nail Art pens. I have quite a few of these, but they have just come out with a glitter/metallic set, and a neon set, so with a pretty good deal, I bought them. I'll show you the glitter/metallic one some time, but this is what the neon set look like:

This picture does not do the colours justice. They are seriously like highlighters! I still wanted to use my crackle polish, and was sad to see the Girly Goth design go, but it had chipped since I caught my fingernail in the car door (thank goodness I didn't damage my actual nail!) so I came up with a rainbow design than I could place under the black crackle. It reminds me of those black scratch boards I used to have as a kid, where you could scratch the black away to reveal rainbow colours of sparkles underneath.

Without the crackle, it looks pretty Eastery (there is that word again). Jeeze, these pictures don't show neon well, do they? Anyway, I applied two coats of Sally Hansen's Lavender Cloud as a white base after my base coat. I tried without the white but the colours looked dull. Once the white had dried (and I mean seriously dry, or the next part won't work), I took a clean foundation sponge and made a gradient effect with the rainbow colours (red, orange yellow, etc) starting with the "Deep Purple" at the base and "Fire Red" at the tip, but if you want, you can reverse this order. If you want to know how to do the gradient, see my very first blog post. Once I had all the colours on my nail, I let them dry (didn't take too long), then applied a thin coat of the black crackle. I made it thin so the black spots wouldn't be so heavy and thick because I really wanted to see the neon colour show through. Finally, I sealed it with a top coat which made is smoother and added shine and really made the neon colours pop! The black crackle dries to a matte finish, so a top coat gives it shine.

Obviously I used the colours from the rainbow, but these are Migi's official names in order that I used them (so... reverse rainbow): "Deep Purple", "Magenta", "Royal Blue", "Kelly Green", "Lemon", "Neon Orange", and "Fire Red". This kit also includes "Hot Pink". This are my nails in the sunlight and in the shade:

I hope you like this design! Any questions, you know how to ask. Enjoy!