Today is my birthday, and if you can believe it, my nails are actually naked right now! THE HORROR! I'm hoping to put something fun on them after I get home from work, but for now, I wanted to share a manicure I spent a lot of time on recently.
I am calling it wasabi and caviar for reasons that I hope are obvious! This entire design is handpainted with regular nail polish. It's some of my best linework to date, I think. Hooray for improvement there!
Nail polishes and products used:
LVX Midori
Formula X Dark Matter
Sally Hansen Stud Kit
If you want to attempt a design like this, I've got some tips!
- Get a small brush. I can't tell you how long I used a thicker nail art brush, cursing my lack of talent rather than the tool I was using. Once I got a thinner brush, it helped me immensely. I still had to keep practicing, but my old brush was definitely part of the problem. Trim down an old brush with cuticle nippers if you don't have a super thin one.
- Keep it clean. If you're using polish (instead of acrylic paint or gel), clean your brush frequently with 100% acetone and regularly put down more polish onto your palette. Polish dries quickly and can wreck your fine lines if it isn't the right consistency.
- Small mistakes aren't the end of the world. You can use a clean nail art brush dipped in acetone to gently "erase" small mistakes from your work; just be careful not to go too crazy or it will eat through your base color. In this case, I put a layer of topcoat between the wasabi shade and my black linework for extra protection.
- Be patient. This shit isn't fast. When you factor in my previous tips and the detail of the work, you just gotta know it's not going to be easy to bust it out in 45 minutes. I like to put on Netflix and take breaks every so often to stretch out.
I just love this kind of strange green color, and the thick blingy stud nail is just the right amount of "odd" to go with it.
Wasabi and Caviar - An Exercise In Linework and Patience
4/
5
Oleh
Bella Suci
