Crackle Polish Challenge #13 - Dragonfly Double Crackle Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #13

Featured crackle application:
Layering a crackle decal over a crackle background to achieve a 'crackle on crackle' effect

Featured crackle polish:
Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat 'Vintage Violet'

Dragonfly Double Crackle Mani

Polishes Used
    Crackle Decal:
        Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat 'Vintage Violet'
        Wet n Wild Wild Shine 'Bijou Blue' (also used as base coat under glitter)
    Glitter:
        Finger Paints 'Daubigny's Garden'
    Crackle Background:
        Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Minted Metal'
        Nicole by OPI 'Gold Texture'
    Solid Nails:
        Nicole by OPI 'Canadian Star', from the Justin Bieber Collection

I chose dragonfly themed colours for this manicure. They are are a combination of cool, shimmery and iridescent polishes. Here's a picture of the bottles.

Polishes Used

This was quite an elaborate manicure to do. The most time consuming part was making the nail polish decals.  To do this, I spread a large swath of (an inexpensive) nail polish over a flat piece of plastic. I used one of the flat sides from one those annoyingly difficult to open transparent rigid plastic packages that pretty much everything you buy these days seems to come encased in. It was great to find a use for them other than accidentally cutting myself, and frustrating me to no end! LOL!

After the polish was completely dry, I put a few different crackle polishes over the swath. When that was completely dry, I attempted to remove the polish from the plastic. At first, I was trying to peel the polish away from the plastic. I had a little difficulty with this method, so I added a layer of topcoat, to try to make it a bit more pliable. I was then able to peel and lift the polish when it dried.

I actually made two crackle sheets, using different base polishes. Due to all of the problems I had with the first sheet, I tried a different removal method for the second sheet. For that one, I tried bending the plastic backwards, along the edge of the dried polish. It worked like a charm - the polish lifted easily and cleanly without topcoat.

The next step was to cut the dried polish into shapes using hole punches. I made heart shapes, and dragon fly shapes since those are the 2 decorative punches that I have. After that, the decals were ready to be applied. I also have a bunch left over, for future manicures.

I've included a pictorial tutorial below:

Here is another collage showing different pictures of the manicure. The thumb close up shots give a better view of the green and gold crackle background, under the decal.

This manicure was a lot of fun to do, and I really like how it turned out! So far, this is one of my favourites from the challenge!