Green & Gold...for the Day on Which Everyone Drinks and Pretends to be Irish

Hello again! Before I get into this post, I wanted to say something: after the last manicure I did, I had to do some repairs if I didn't want to hurt my quick.  This was the very first time I did a repair with some fabric, and it's not too perfect.  I feel like some of my nails look a little like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I still want to share swatches, so here we go!

This time, I used as a base my gold shade from NaiLuv called "Hit the Jackpot".  When I got this polish and opened it up in a video, I thought it was really thick because it was cold, and it would become less viscous as it warmed up.... Well, I was wrong!  Because of all the sparkles in it, it is a bit thicker in consistency, and I guess even my other glitter-packed gels are like that, too (for example: OPI Gelcolor's "Goldeneye").  So it's very thick, and doesn't "self-level" as easily as other gels, which you can kind of see on my swatch photo.  The color itself is a nice gold; it's not very yellow-based, more of a champagne-based gold, I would say, so in some lights it looks a bit more silver-like.  The gel base is slightly gold-tinged as well. I used only one coat for my swatch, so I think by three coats it would be opaque.

By the way, in this swatch my one nail looks transparent, because I painted the back of it, too... oops:

Then there's the green, which is Gelish "Polar Attraction".  I'll be honest here... for some reason, in my head I thought Gelish had suggested using only one coat of this gel because of its properties.  AFTER doing my manicure, I looked back on the videos I had watched a while ago and realized how wrong I was...that you should use two coats as normal, but only use the MAGNET on the top coat.  So my manicure looks a little bald in some spots, and perhaps a bit more sparkly because of the bald bits...

Anyway, the color itself is a very sparkly metallic green, more of a true grass green--although it can look kind of greyed out in some lights because of the metallic finish, in yellow lighting it "warms up" a bit.  Here's an interesting thing I noticed because I only used one coat: when you put the magnet on top of the gel, it redistributes the pigment a little along with the magnetized particles.  Even though I only used one coat, it DID look opaque before I put the magnet on it--honest, officer!

As for the main attraction--the ability to create "nail art" with a magnet, well, I found that both good and bad.  It did help camouflage the bald spots (albeit it also CREATED the bald spots, so whatever).  But it's a bit hard to make it look "perfect"; since it's gel you're definitely not stuck with a design you don't like, and you can always wipe it with your brush and try again, but it still takes some time to perfect your method.   You have to cure one or two fingers at a time to keep those self-leveling properties from destroying your magnetized design.  If you'll notice, a few of my fingers look blurrier than others because I wasted a little too much time before curing it, and a few are a little off centered.

Because of all of this, I think there's a few magnet designs that work better with this polish than others.  I bought my magnets online, so the magnets I used were originally for the China Glaze magnet collection.  This boxy/fishnet patterned one came out my favorite, I felt like it redistributed the pigment and the magnetized particles the best: