Fancy Foil

Sometimes something looks amazing in my head, but it just doesn't come out as awesome on my nails.  That's how I felt with this foil.  No matter what I tried, I just couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to.

I received this holo foil from Born Pretty Store in exchange for an honest review.  It is a transparent, slightly opaque, foil with holographic dots (it also comes in four different patterns).  On the Born Pretty Store website, they show the foil over black polish, and the nails look black with holo dots.  I was sold!  I tried the look myself (above), and as you can see, my nails look more grey/blue.  The shot above is in indirect light indoors, so you don't see the holo factor too much.  Below I have some alternate lighting shots.  But back to the foil...  It was easy to apply, although getting full coverage without creasing is hard.  Aside from the color distortion issue, my main challenge with this foils was not distorting the holo quality.  I tried painting just a clear top coat over it, and I tried foil sealant and top coat, but both would dull the holo.  It still looked nice, but it wasn't holographic (pretty much just looked like the picture above, but a little duller).  Eventually I just redid it, and didn't put top coat on for photos.  I haven't worked with this type of foil before, so maybe it needs a different type of sealant.

Here's a shot using the flash.  You can definitely see the holo here.

And another shot in direct sunlight.  It looks cool...just wish I could figure out the top coat issue.

I also tried this foil over a white polish.  It looked really good, but I couldn't get it to photograph well.

My first idea for this foil was to do a glittery holo galaxy nail.  First I painted a galaxy nail, then I applied the foil.  As you can see, the top coat really dulled the foil so I just looked grey.  I tried to salvage the mani adding some more polish on top of the foil.  It looked okay, but the features of the foil were completely lost and the point of this design was to highlight the foil.

 

If you've tried this type of product before and have some tips for me, I'd love to hear them.  I really want to get this to work!

 

If you haven't checked out all the nail art supplies from Born Pretty Store, you are seriously missing out.  Great prices AND you can get an additional 10% off with coupon code GHLQ10.