The Makeup Box

Mermaid “Glequin” Fish-scale Manicure: Ciate Apples and Custard polish with Blue Acrylic Paint and Aqua Hexagon Glitter

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I love, love, love the look of hexagonal glitter on the nails, and the dramatic “sequin nails” look.

But I especially like the honey-combed look where instead of dunking your entire finger in glitter, you carefully dot each piece of glitter on with a pointed object so it looks like fish scales.

Key to the look is a translucent larger sized glitter. If you choose an opaque glitter the ombre colors beneath won’t show through. If they are too small, you can’t place them on properly. You can find hex glitters from most art stores, but they don’t always stock larger sizes, so you can also search for sets like these on Lightinthebox.com ($6.99 with free international shipping!) or ebay.

WARNING: this nail look takes a LONG time to do…

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Lakeshore: Sage-green and blue shadow tutorial (Coastal Scents Hot Pot)

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I’m on a roll with these hot pots! Today, I’m using one of my ABSOLUTE favorite shades in the collection.

Lakeshore is a gorgeous duochrome smoky green-blue with a golden sheen, and very close in appearance to a much more expensive and inaccessible shadow shade “Chrome” from I Nuovi. Using duochromes is always fun because they have enough dimension to make any look more “complex” than it really is.

Despite the $1.99 price tag, the texture for this particular shade is great; smooth and creamy-feeling, and the payoff is really good as well. If you like oceanic shades, this is definitely one shadow to have in your collection.

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Step 1: Use a flat angled brush to first apply a deep-dark navy shade (Coastal Scents Rainstorm) thickly along the upper lash line like a liner. Extend at the outer corners just slightly. If you own MAC Deep Truth, just use that instead.

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Step 2: Using a fluffy blending brush, I applied a soft sage-green shade (Coastal Scents Spruced Up) to the inner 1/3 of the lids. 

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Step 3: Using the duochrome blue-gold, do a V shape, wrapping the green applied earlier. The lower leg should be along the lash line and the top leg should be right along the hollow of the socket line.

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Step 4: Reinforcing the dark blue. At the outer corner, run the same navy from earlier (Rainstorm) along the outer curve, smoking it into the blue-gold slightly. Curve down into the lash line.

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Step 5: Run the navy along the outer half of the lower lash line, and the duochrome blue-gold along the inner half, using the flat angled brush.

Then curl lashes and apply mascara.