Friday, August 3, 2012

Nail art!

It's me again with the nails! It's been two whole hours since I posted about my nails, did you miss me? :) Someone in my comments asked about the nail art I use and asked me to take pictures. (I swear, someone did! Go look!) Pictures of my nail art, you say?! Yay! :)

OK, so first you've got to get yourself a giganto case full of more nail polish than any person needs.


That thing is huge and weighs a ton. Once upon a time it was super organized. Then I bought too much nail polish and gave up. I just toss it all in there. GENTLY, because if you're not gentle you shatter the bottle, get glass in your bed, slice your foot open and then you can't ride your bike and that sucks.

I have no idea how many bottles of nail polish I own. I'm pretty sure the number is embarrassing and even if I did know I wouldn't tell you.

Next you need to buy approximately eight hundred thousand of these:


Those are nail art plates. They're little metal plates with designs in them. They're the pattern you use for nail art. The "real" brand is Konad. I usually buy a brand called Mash. Same stuff. Cheaper. I like cheaper. I order them from Amazon. You can get a whole crapload of them for like $11. Search for Mash plates. Or Konad plates, but trust me, Mash is cheaper.

Next you choose which design you want and put the plate on this thing:


You can't tell in the picture but that pink thing has a round cut out in it that you sit the plate in. You should probably clean off the old nail polish before you take photos and share them on your blog. Gross.

Next you decide which color of nail polish you want the design to be and paint it over the design like this:

Paint it on thick. Also, if you're really smart you should do all of this on the new fancy duvet that you just bought for your bed because fingernail polish on your fancy new bedding is awesome. (I didn't get nail polish on my fancy new duvet, thank goodness, but it did just occur to me how stupid it was to take all of the pictures on my bed, lol.)

Next, you use a plastic scrapey thing with a metal edge to scrape off the excess polish:

You can buy all these supplies on Amazon. Search for Konad nail stamps and it should all come up. It's pretty inexpensive.

What you're left with after you scrape off the excess polish is polish that it all nicely settled down into the groove of the design on the plate. You have to work quickly at this point because it dries quickly.

Now you need to transfer the design to the stamp. The stamp is a plastic handle with a piece of rubber on each end. Press the rubber down onto the plate and the polish will transfer to the stamp. Like I said, work quickly because it dries quickly and if it dries before you get it transferred to the stamp you're going to have to clean off the plate and start over. That happens to me all the time. I go through more nail polish remover than any sane person really should.

Here's what it looks like on the stamp:

Check to make sure that the whole image transferred to the stamp and then roll the stamp across your fingernail. If everything goes according to plan you now have a super cool design on your fingernail!

Clean the nail polish off the stamp and plate, repeat nine more times and cover with a clear top coat to protect it. I reccomend Seche Vite, which is the best top coat ever.

A note about nail polish. Konad sells what they call "Special Polish", which is what you're technically supposed to use to stamp the designs. It's thicker than regular polish so it's supposed to make a heavier, clearer design. For a long time I stupidly thought you HAD to use it (because they said so!) so I bought several colors of their fancy special polish to stamp the designs.

I have since found out that you really don't have to use their special polish. I don't like their polish because there are limited colors and it's expensive. You will get varied results with regular nail polish but I've found plenty of regular polish that will work. I use OPI and Essie polish to stamp all the time and I've used other brands as well. Thicker polish works better, but I've had luck with all sorts of different polish. I got a tip from somewhere online that if you're going to use regular nail polish, run a fingernail file over the rubber tip a couple of times and rough it up slightly. It makes the polish stick better. I don't know if that's necessary but I usually do it anyway. I just experiment and play around with different polishes to see what works.

Nail stamping is really fun and pretty inexpensive. Everything you need can be found on Amazon. I haven't ever seen the supplies in regular stores aside from a Konad kiosk in our mall that isn't there anymore, but you might be able to find them at a beauty supply store or something. I haven't looked very hard, Amazon is just easier.

If you give it a try, let me know! I want photos of your creation! :)

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