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enter image description here

I saw many women painted their nails like the above picture. There are a lot of tiny shiny dots on it.

if it is a normal color like red or blue, then I just need to say "she painted her fingernails red/blue/ etc"

But if she painted her nails like the above picture, then I don't know which word should I fill in this dotted line.

She painted her fingernails ......

For example, She painted her fingernails twinkling/shiny etc

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The effect in the image would usually be called "sparkly" or "glittery." However, those adjectives are not usually used in the same way as colors, so "she painted her fingernails glittery" would most likely be understood, but not really the most idiomatic.

I would probably say "she painted her fingernails with sparkly nail polish" (color left ambiguous) or "she painted her fingernails [pink/white/blue/etc] with glitter" (since "sparkly" and "glittery" are not a color, they just describe the effect).

"Twinkling" is pretty much only used for stars and eyes (as a metaphor from stars), and "shiny" would be something like metal or really smooth plastic, with a "solid-textured" shine as opposed to lots of little dots of shine.

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  • In Britain, we call that kind of stuff 'nail varnish', and the specific type in the picture 'glitter nail varnish'. We call the metallic looking sparkly stuff (a kind of powder) that it contains 'glitter'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Jul 29 at 17:57
  • @MichaelHarvey in the US you can say "glitter nail polish" as well.
    – Esther
    Jul 29 at 18:04
  • Can we cay "she painted her fingernails glittery red"?
    – Tom
    Jul 30 at 3:22

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