This is the easiest way to add your glitter, and it is also way less messy than the loose glitter we’ll be discussing next.

You will find glitter polishes in most polish ranges. The size of the actual glitter pieces can differ from tiny & very fine, to much larger glitter pieces.You will also find that there is a difference in the amount/ratio of how much glitter in different glitter polishes.

With glitter polish, you will simply paint the polish onto the area or in the pattern where you want to add your glitter on your nail. You can also build ‘the amount’ of glitter that you add, by simply adding another layer after the previous one has dried.

Helpful tip: Paint a layer of glitter polish over your regular mani that is a few days old to hide any small chips or to ‘freshen’ your mani up.

Applying loose glitter requires a bit more effort, patience and time.

I prefer using ‘makeup glitter’ or glitter that was specifically designed for nail art, but the regular old stationary shop glitter will also do the job 😉

Apply some polish (clear or coloured) to your nail where you want the loose glitter to stick to, dust your glitter over the area, and gently shake off the excess.

Be sure not to use too much polish. You want enough for the glitter to be able to stick to it, but you do not want a gooey mess that takes forever to dry.

Then you can either leave it like that without a top coat – and personally I prefer the way it looks without a top coat over – But… I have also found that the glitter then transfers onto EVERYTHING that your nails come in contact with, so you end up with glitter on everything – but your nails… lol

Or apply a clear top coat for a neater look.

Helpful tip: I would suggest that you work on top of a large piece of paper (eg. I like to use the back page of an old magazine) – so that when you are done, you can simply fold the paper in half letting all the spilled glitter bits slide into the fold, from where you can easily ‘slide’ them back into your glitter container.

Here is an example where I used 2 types of loose glitter – making my ring finger into an accent nail by using a different colour and type of glitter – with a clear top coat over.

And here I used a Glitter polish over a Matt black polish, for some contrasting textures.

For this look I again used loose glitter, and applied it in a ‘hook’ shaped French Mani Tip.

And for this look I used the Scotch Tape technique (cutting a zig-zag pattern into scotch tape and using it as a guide) to paint a Chevron nail art design (we will still be discussing the Chevron Nail Art Technique in future) using both glitter polish and loose glitter.