Sunday, July 22, 2012

Nail Polish Art

I saw a post on Facebook with a video by PBS on the topic of nail polish as art.  I loved the video.  It's short (3 minutes long) and funny and well worth watching, and I recognized beautiful nail art from bloggers I've been following.  Seriously, if you haven't seen this video already, go look at it now!


Here's a link to the video:  Does Nail Art Prove That Anything Can Be a Canvas for Artistic Expression?


I showed the video to my husband, and I was surprised that he actually liked several of the pictures of the nail art on other blogs.  He liked a gorgeous green water marble on Colette's blog:

Image from Colette's blog, My Simple Little Pleasures, in her post on her Extreme Green Water Marble.
She used these colors:  China Glaze Paper Chasing, China Glaze Jolly Holly, Sally Hansen Emerald City, Savvy Andrea's Mint, and China Glaze White on White.

Colette has many step-by-step pictures of the process on the post, and she has a tutorial video in that same post also.  You can see the post here.



My husband also liked the oh-so-pretty bandana gradient nails on Sarah's blog, Chalkboard Nails:

Image from Sarah's blog, Chalkboard Nails, in her post on her Bandana Gradient Nails.
She used OPI Manicurist of Seville, L'Oreal Haute Couture
and stamped with Konad Special Polish White using Shany plate SH20.


There was another picture he liked, but I cannot identify the source.  If any of you can let me know where the image of the polka dot pointed nails comes from on the internet, I would appreciate it.




Seeing other bloggers try out stamping and dotting and other nail art techniques is making me build up the courage to try it myself.  I see myself getting stamping plates soon!  If any of you can highly recommend any brand of nail stamping plates (or warn me to stay away from any brands) and give me tips on where to buy them as inexpensively as possible, I would appreciate it so much!

Thank you for reading my blog!


7 comments:

  1. Cheeky are the best stamping plates I have tried, Konad are good but expensive, I ordered my Cheeky plates from Amazon, Bundle Monster seem ok, I have ordered and cancelled the third set once, and put them in my basket a couple of times on Amazon. As for stamping polishes I would heartily recommend getting at least one Konad Special Stamping Polish, although I have read on blogs that the Mash black polish is easier to clean up.

    I am not a fan of water marbling, I have tried and failed on about 10 occasions. In fact my first attempt was actually the best! Despite taping carefully I always get covered (outside edge of hand seems to be common area for me being multicoloured) and once I used a plastic cup which split and leaked water everywhere, I think it may have been the lacquers causing a reaction somehow.

    Dotting tools are nice and cheap - I got mine from ebay for a couple of quid, I also keep the pointiest one on hand when i've just done my nails, as inevitably I get an itch and it's handy to scratch with!

    Tape manis are a simple way to start, Nailside blog has some good tutorials on taping to get explosions etc, and if it doesn't come out sharp then you can dot to hide the not straight edge!!

    I also like gradient mani's though they can be messy, like water marbling, but they are fairly easy, and plenty of tutorials out there on blogs.

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    1. Thanks for the tip on the Cheeky plates! I will go look at them. I love to buy things on Amazon. I can put them on my wish list until I'm ready to buy, and that way I never forget about anything. I have both black and white Konad polishes on my Amazon wish list right now. It's more like a shopping list for me!

      I have a small amount of dotting tools, but it's more than enough to try it out.

      I'm a scrapbooker--or at least I was before the iphone and my nail polish obsession took over my life--and I have thought of cutting out shapes from tape with one of my stamps and then using that as a stencil, or creating polish strips (or using leftover pieces of Sally Hansen ones) and cutting out shapes with my scrapbooking stamps and then putting the cut-out shapes on my nails as decorations on top of nail polish.

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  2. Great answer, Emma! I had all these questions, too! I tried my first gradient yesterday, and although it was messy, it was fairly easy to do! I also have dotting tools, and that is very easy to do. I'm still poor at stamping, but I think it's a practice issue. Good luck!

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    1. Thanks :) I did a gradient yesterday too, I wrote this then realised that I hadn't done any of them apart from stamp for ages! When the gradient went wrong I dotted instead!!

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    2. Shannon-Lee, how did I manage to miss that you had a blog all this time?????

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  3. I have a blog award for you!
    http://luckylovenails.blogspot.com/2012/07/versatile-award.html

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    1. Thanks again! I did a blog post with my response here: http://lacquerlovinglawyer.blogspot.com/2012/07/versatile-blogger-award.html

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