Showing My Pride!

June is Pride month for the LGBTQIA community and last weekend was the Pride celebration here in Baltimore. I woke up Saturday morning and immediately thought, "It's Pride day!" so I ran to my Helmers and grabbed all the holos I could find to make a perfect rainbow. I lined everything up and realized I was missing an orange holo. My boyfriend just ordered a bottle of Hits Demeter for me (thanks honey!) but it hasn't made its way to Baltimore just yet. So what did I do? I made my own. Here's all of the polishes I used. If you follow us on Facebook, you've already seen this!

From left to right

Hits- Atena

Darling Diva Polish- Barbi Who?

Franken I made- OPI- Ya'll Come Back Ya Hear? with Spectraflair added

Milani- 3D

Milani- Hi Tech

China Glaze- He's Going In Circles

Nubar- Reclaim

Hits- Hera

Darling Diva Polish- Dusty Sky

Pretty and Polished- Galactus

Darling Diva Polish- Mata Hari

Now how am I supposed to get 11 polishes on 10 finger nails? I started on a nail wheel to see how well I could get these colors to blend together using different nail art techniques. I quickly discovered that I didn't need to sponge a gradient on my nails at all. Since holos are relatively sheer, it was just going to be a matter of careful layering. So I just went for it and this is what happened!

Artificial light

Pretty cool huh? I was at work all day Saturday and I was obviously staring at my nails the entire time. I noticed a few areas that could use some better blending. Since each polish was from different brands and collections, the holo particles in each color were different sizes and took some trial and error to get everything to blend smoothly. As soon as I got off work, I ran home to touch up a few areas and TA-DA! Now I'm ready to go to the parade!

I had such a great time at the parade and block party. I took lots of pictures, ran into lots of friends and made a few new ones. And of course my nails were a huge hit.

Here's a bunch of photos of my Pride mani in the sun. A rainbow mani that has rainbow sparkles? Talk about a double rainbow all the way!

I used my Essie Protein Base Coat and my new favorite top coat, Hong Kong Girl. I only saw tip wear on my right pointer finger and ONE chip after 4 days of wear. Yes, I wore this mani for FOUR DAYS!

I added a little box to show my thumb next to the others. You know, to give you the full rainbow effect :)

Peppermint stick in a lemon!

I'm so PROUD of this mani and to live in an area that has such amazing LGBTQIA Pride!