Aussie Christmas Nail Challenge: Gold

Let me just start by saying I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS MANI! I can't stop staring at it. When I saw that 'Gold' was one of the themes for this challenge I knew immediately what I would be doing.

Lamp light (most colour-accurate)

Full sunlight

Shade

Bottle shot to show you that amazing gold shimmer (please excuse the lamp reflection)

I previously did this mani using silver leaf and Rainbow Honey's 'Kawako' (see here). This time I've used gold leaf and OPI's 'The Spy Who Loved Me'. Really all I can saw is WOW. I've tried my best to capture this on camera but clearly a photo can't do this justice (hence the multitude of photos, sorry!). 'The Spy Who Loved Me' has an absolutely stunning gold shimmer in it which perfectly matches the gold leaf. When I first tried this colour on my swatch sticks I was disappointed, it appeared to be very sheer and I even toyed with the idea of layering it over something because I hate VNL. However, this is 2 coats and it's completely opaque. I'M IN LOVE! I don't normally rave about 'mainstream' (i.e. not indie) polishes, but if you're a person who loves red make sure you get your hands on this one.

I bought my gold leaf on ebay for about $5 for 25 sheets. The brand is Mont Marte and it's also available in silver and copper. To break it up I put a small amount of it in a container and used 2 toothpicks to pull it apart. MAKE SURE YOU TURN THE FAN OFF AND CLOSE THE WINDOWS OR IT WILL FLY ALL OVER THE ROOM. I didn't break my pieces down as much as I did when I did this previously with the silver leaf, as I wanted a more dramatic effect this time.

Sorry for all the yelling in this post, I felt it was necessary in order to show my love for this mani. In the lead up to Christmas I've been dragging myself through 11 hour shifts at work, so I'm not sure if I'll have the strength to do another post before Christmas, but I'll try and squeeze one in!