Before & After: Red Skittle

Hello!

Sometimes I overthink things, lol...When I saw 'Inspired by your favorite color' as a challenge prompt, I thought a lot about what that meant, particularly since we've already done 'your fav color family' and 'your fav polish'. Of course my favorite color is red, and people talk about it as a 'power' color and a color that people are attracted to because it gets attention. I certainly like the fact that it's a bold color, but for me I think it has more to do with the warmth of it. It feels warm and cozy to me, and I love being surrounded by it. I thought about doing something with flames or fire, but that just didn't quite feel right, so I kept thinking. I also have always favored red because it favors me--it has always set off my dark hair and my light skin beautifully, so I like the way it looks on me, and I love contrasting it with neutrals.

It was that contrasting-it-with-neutrals thought that captured my attention when I was thinking things through, and I decided to do a mani that uses the contrast between red and black and silver. :)

I started with a base of Layla SE07; This is a dark red polish with a matte finish:

Layla Softouch Effect 07 in indirect light

Direct light

I like the matte finish, but honestly I think this polish is at its most beautiful with a shiny topcoat, so I did some skittle madness with it and then shined it on up:

Look at that rust-gold sparkle that comes out when you add topcoat!

On the pinky finger, I put a silver and a black study; on the ring finger, I put a stripe of Orly Liquid Vinyl and a stripe of Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. On the middle finger I put some loose diamond glitter; the silver ones are from Born Pretty Store (I will do a review later this week) and the black diamonds were a gift to me from a friend. Finally, on the index finger, I painted half of it with Orly Liquid Vinyl, and then stamped over it with Silver Mercedes and LeaLac Plate LLC-B.

The more skittle manis I do, the more I love them. This is the second or third set I've done with red, and I think it's just such a great look!

Thanks for stopping by, and please check out what the other challenge participants came up with, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.