3DC: Inspired by a Color

3 weeks in!  I really did not think that I would make it this far into the challenge because it's pretty demanding, so I'm pretty proud of myself.  Today kicks off the final third: inspirations.
Inspired by a color is a little bit unfair because I have already posted color inspiration manis here, here, and here for Go Pink Wednesdays, and I'll have a couple more coming.  But, a challenge is a challenge, so I went ahead and tried another one.
I bought MaxFactor's Fantasy Fire on a blog sale a while back.  I know that this is super sought after and have been hesitant to use it because it's so small!  I decided to kind of let this be my color inspiration today.

The red/purple combo with the dark blue base is really pretty.  I have quite a bit of nail art coming up this week, so I really just wanted to do something simple and easy, and there's not much that's easier than layering glitter!  You can see the sparkle of Fantasy Fire in this next photo:

*1 coat Sally Hansen Hard As Nails
*2 coats Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-bolt Blue
*1 coat MaxFactor Fantasy Fire (ring finger)
*1 coat Finger Paints (thumb and middle)
*1 coat Nubar 2010 (index and pinkie)

 

 

I used 1 coat of Fantasy Fire over the navy Co-bolt Blue.  It's hard to really see in these photos, but in real life the pretty purple-red shimmer is very strong.  I hate that this is so expensive and hard to come by because I'd love to use more layers of it, but that bottle is so tiny!

 

I wanted to play with the red-blue color combo, so I used red-shifting flakies over the top of the navy.  I decided to use both Nubar 2010 and Finger Paints Flashy to compare them.  They both have red flakes of glitter that lay flat and are really easy to apply.

 

 

The flakes in Flashy are consistently a bit bigger than 2010, but the two are really close to each other.  I didn't think they'd be so similar when I used them because the bases appear so different, but it's really pretty hard to tell them apart on the nail.

Do you own any of these pretties?  How do you pair your flakies?  Any cool combos I should try?  What about Fantasy Fire?  Do you have it?  How do you use this tough to find jewel?