December Daysish - fabulous nails

[wildeabandon]

bunnypip asked for "a post about the hows and whys and wherefores of having fabulous nails", and since I've just had my nails & cocktails party this weekend, now seems a good time for it.

I used to wear nail polish quite a lot whilst I was living in Cambridge and going to goth clubs regularly, but then fell out of the habit until my recent stint in Oxford, where there was once again a club I could go to and be able to get home without wrestling with night buses. At first is was just a single basic colour - usually dark jewel colours or metallics. Then one time when I was buying nail polishes I noticed some nail stickers that were quite cool, and a little while after that I tried looking for some specific stickers online, realised just how many interesting nail art supplies and gadgets there were to be had, and kind of fell down the rabbit hole.

One of the things I really like about it is that although I'm not at all artistic, and generally can't do the complex hand-painted designs especially well, there's loads and loads of other techniques and designs that don't require much skill once I've had a bit of practice, but are interesting enough that strangers compliment them fairly frequently. I did different things for each nail at the party - initially because I was demonstrating techniques, and then after that because it would be silly to have one hand all different, and one hand all the same.





Thumbnail is a sponge gradient - you paint three stripes of varying shades onto a sponge, then transfer that to the nail. Let it get half dry, then repeat, smudging a bit to get the edges as a smooth transition rather than stark stripes.

Index finger is a brushed gradient. A plain midnight blue background, then one coat of glitter over 3/4 of the nail, a second coat over 1/2 the nail, and a third coat just at the tip.

Middle finger is done with a stamping tool. You start with a metal plate with the design etched into it, paint polish over the design, and scrape most of it off with a flat plastic surface*, then use a rubber stamp to transfer the remaining polish from the plate to your nail.

Ring finger uses a dotting tool (basically, a rod with a metal sphere at each end which can be dipped in polish and then touched to the nail to get a neat circular dot - they come in various sizes) for the petals, and the stem/leaves are added by hand (you can see that I'm not that great at that bit)

Little finger has a blue base, then two pieces of striping tape applied before painting over them in purple. The tape gets removed immediately and gives a nice clean line.



The thumb here is just a shimmery blue base coat, and then a topcoat of Grafitti by Revlon, which is basically the best topcoat in the world.

Index finger is another sponge gradient, but in green/blue/purple, rather than shades of the same colour.

The remaining three were done for me by skorpionuk:

Middle finger is a pale purple base with blue gemstones, ring finger is handpainted silver zigzag on midnight blue base, and little finger is another stamped one.

*I have read that you can use a credit card for this, but it turns out that nail polish remover destroys the magnetic strip, so don't do that.


I really enjoy the process of doing my nails, especially when a new technique really comes together well, and what's more, I get a little burst of joy every time I look at them for days. It may be horribly vain, but it still makes me happy.

Comments

[nou]

This is great! I particularly like the stamped ones.

I don't often have decorated nails, since they make me feel inhibited from using my hands as much as I want to, so it's not worth me putting in the time to get good at it myself. But I like getting them done professionally, and (a) there are some very affordable nail bars near me and (b) my local history interest gives me an excuse to go and document the efforts of these nail bars for the future. The latest example (photo at bottom).

[wildeabandon]

Oh, those are lovely. I keep meaning to get my done professionally at some point, but haven't got around to it yet.

[sfred]

I particularly like the glitter brushed gradient!