Nail Art Wednesday: Flakie Rainbow Nails

I'm generally a fan of the minimalist aesthetic and I'd like to think that translates into my nail art designs. Today's is particularly minimalist and easy to do. See, I've been wanting to play a bit with my Fingerpaints Special Effects flakie top coats but I haven't found a way to wear them all together (without resorting to skittle nails) until I had a eureka moment and thought to do it this way. The beauty of this particular design is how you can do this by freehand without using any special tools or brushes other than those that already come with the nail polishes themselves. Indeed, the only hard part was having to take it all off when a color change was finally in order!

Not exactly the ROYGBIV kind, but close enough, I'd say.

What I Used:
Black base: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blackout
"Blue" flakies: Fingerpaints Motley (alternatively: Nails Inc Old Vic)
"Green" flakies: Fingerpaints Flecked
"Red" flakies: Fingerpaints Flashy (alternatively: Essie Shine of the Times, Nubar 2010, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure)
*** I used quotes as it doesn't exactly denote the colors (except as shown in certain angles) as they shift continuously.

How I Did It:

This is such an easy way to jazz up an older mani, especially if it's darker colored to make the different colors of flakies really pop. I do have to mention that of the three flakie top coats I used here, Motley was the hardest to make most opaque, followed by Flashy, with Flecked being the most flakie dense. Because of this, you might end up with way thicker than usual coats so dry time will need a whole lot of patience with this. If you can find alternative flakie top coats that are more dense in terms of flakies per mL, you might want to opt for those. I've found that the Essie Luxe Effects flakies (Shine of the Times, As Gold As It Gets) are a whole lot more dense so you might want to recreate this with those two instead.

 Love how the blue almost transitions into the green!

 See how the "red" zone here looks more orange and partly yellow?

 Flash doesn't play well with flakies. *sad face*

 Hammie says: Flakie rainbows look amazing!

I added a matte to coat to see if it would look better matte or not. The jury's still out.

Yay for the long weekend (that's not too far off)! Did you snag any of the Fingerpaints Special Effects nail polishes? How do you feel about the flakie trend: over it or can't have enough? Other than the Fingerpaints polishes, which are your favorite flakie top coats?