Mirror, mirror on my nails

Last week I had to get something in my local drugstore and you know how it goes: you need one thing, but end up buying ten totally unrelated other things… That’s how I ended up with some kind of mirror nail metallic powder I had never heard about but seemed cool. Only when I was outside my brain started functioning normally again and I decided to look up some reviews. I had already bought it, so it was kind of too late to return it, but I just had to know if it was any good before trying the product. Turns out I liked the mirror nail powder, but not the sealing top coat.

Mirror, mirror on my nails

literally five years ago (yep, I looked that one up on my personal Facebook page) I had already bought nail stickers to put mirror nails on your nails. I wasn’t super happy with it, and one year later I bought another type of those mirror nail stickers. They were suuuper difficult to use, to be honest. My thumb and index fingers are not completely flat, and as a result I had to make cuts to the sides of the stickers to bend them according to my nail shape. So when I saw this easy to use powder, I couldn’t resist.

Essence metal shock nail powder

The package comes with a tiny jar filled with glittery powder, and some basic explanation on how to use it. As I was reading through the reviews, however, I picked up some best practices to use this product.

First of all: be prepared to find glitters everywhere. …And still I wasn’t prepared to the sticky glitters I would find literally everywhere.

Besides that, I used the tips I found on Beautylab (Dutch only) and some other blogs. Apparently the product already existed for almost a year, and then I’m the one who’s always telling everyone I blog about nail art, oops! Either way, I could not have gotten a fairly good result if it hadn’t been for those blogs, because the info on the box was just way too basic. And then it was time to test it myself…

How to get mirror nails?

It is fairly easy to use the product, once you know how to. You start by simply painting your nails with nail polish. Doesn’t really matter which one, except when you use the silver nail powder, then apparently a bright base is best. (With the other colors black works best, apparently!) I simply used my regular base coat. You wait for it to dry well and then dirty work begins. Yay!

Dab your finger in the jar and polish/buff the powder on your nails. I think it works best if you work in a vertical way, from the top of your nail to the bottom of your nail, not sideways.

I always applied two layers, because one layer was just glittery, but with two you could really get that mirror effect.

Another tip I got from Beautylab: wash your hands/nails, then apply the sealing top coat. Makes them less dull, apparently.

The effect is more or less the same as with the mirror nail stickers: you see some reflection, but it’s not completely sharp. Don’t expect to really see yourself in your nails! Big difference with the stickers is that you can see the grains of the powder. Application and general feeling is better with the powder though.

I was fairly happy but then I made a BIG mistake.

Why I don’t like the metal shock sealing top coat

As I told you already the glitters get everywhere. And since you dab it with your fingers, a lot of them get on your hands. Obviously, you want to wash them off. 🙂 🙂 However, I didn’t realise on time that the metal shock sealing top coat is water based. So when I wanted to wash my hands (which I have done so many times before while/after painting my nails) after having just applied the water based top coat I ended up with one mirror nail and nine ‘damp wall’ nails. Eek! Makes sense, in the end, but it messed up my nail art completely. I quickly took everything off and will try it again another time, but it really sucks that I’ve put time and effort in something that I won’t be able to show around. Lessons learned!

As you might have noticed, the pictures aren’t of a super good quality. I took them with my phone, since I didn’t want to get too much glitter on my camera. 😉

Have you ever tried mirror nails?

xo Noor