I’ve written about Glam and Glits’ Ink gel polish brand many times, but they recently came out with a couple of new products that I’m really excited about. The first that I’m going to share with you is their Pure Pigment Collection, which includes 32 pigments and effects. Pigments can be blended with gel polish, acrylic powder or gel to create new finishes and effects.
My favorite way to use pigments is to blend them into the tacky layer of gel polish to create gradient effects. I created this fun dotted manicure using a few of the Glam and Glits pigments. To achieve this look I polished all of my nails with two coats of Ink Glacier (white) gel polish, and then took a dry brush and patted the pigment powder into the tacky layer and then blended the pigments with the brush. For the ring finger and thumb, I just applied a top coat over the gradient effect that this created. On the other fingers, I applied dots of top coat with a dotting tool. After curing the top coat in my LED light, I wiped the excess pigment powder off using a lint-free alcohol wipe, which exposed the white polish underneath. There is a video demonstration on how this was done at the bottom of this post.
Glam and Glits sent me six pigments to try out. I used swatch sticks to demonstrate how each looks as a gradient over white and black. You can see that the color and effects differ depending on the base color used. You can blend pigments together to create new, unique colors as well.
Masquerade is a gorgeous teal blue pigment, my favorite color! This color stays pretty similar when applied over the light and dark bases.
Timeline is a light green pigment. This shade looks a little more olive when applied over black.
Burnt Out is a reddish-orange, but actually looks more pink when applied over black.
Sparkling Gold is an amazing glittery gold that looks fabulous over any base color.
Golden Sparkle is a light colored pigment powder with a very subtle golden shimmer. I had a very hard time capturing the golden shimmer effect when it was applied over white, but it has a really stunning shimmer effect. The gold effect is much more evident when it’s applied over black.
Glimmer Glow is similar to Golden Sparkle, except the effect is a silver shimmer. Again, my photo doesn’t capture the silver shimmer well when it’s applied over white, but it’s also very pretty.
Head over to the Glam and Glits website to check out all 32 colors and effects! You can also check out my swatches of the Glam and Glits Ink gel polish here.
Update: I received a lot of questions about this technique, so I made a quick demo video.