Tutorial: Glass Nails (Without Gel)

There hasn't been a really good and innovative nail trend in a while, so when glass nails emerged out of Korea people naturally tried to join in as fast as possible. I've seen many hits and misses as well as misinformation about how to achieve this look.

So, let's break this look down:

• They're called glass nails because the cellophane or holographic nail foil used is cut up to look like pieces of broken glass. Remember, real glass is transparent so you shouldn't be using anything that's opaque in nature. If you're using something like shimmery silver paper or gold leaf you won't get the same effect.
• Also, with this look, the finished nails should be smooth to the touch. Glass pieces shouldn't be sticking off the nail. It doesn't look great and it's scratchy and uncomfortable for the wearer, so the goal is to avoid roughness. When the nails are smooth on the surface the top coat gives it another layer of shine--kind of like how pools sparkle in the sunlight. Remember, this look isn't about glitter, it's about shine!
• I've also seen people say that you can only use the "glass" pieces with gel nails--FALSE. I haven't used gel for any of my looks. It's not easy, but you can create good looking glass nails without gel.

HOW TO DO IT:

1. Cut up your pieces first. Lately I've been using BornPrettyStore.com's Holographic Nail Foil #4 (see bottom of post for a coupon!). Small pieces work best because long pieces have a hard time sitting flat against your curved nail. Most cellophane/holographic foil isn't very flexible either, so err on the side of caution.
2. Plan on applying the pieces one nail at a time. I knew that I wanted my second coat of polish to be my last before the glass was put on, so I applied one coat to all of my nails at once then started painting my second coat just before I put on the glass pieces. Remember, a thicker coat of polish will be better for holding the pieces.
3. Right after I paint my final coat of base polish, I start sinking the glass pieces into the polish one-by-one. I use a dotting tool to apply the pieces (wet the end to pick them up) and to push the edges down into the polish. Don't push too hard. Just tap on them until they sink a bit. I would avoid overlapping the pieces.
4. After adequate drying time, apply a top coat. A thicker one like Seche Vite is better. Now wait.
5. Your top coat should flatten out a bit and leave some rough edges around the glass. So, add another top coat. It might flatten out again, and that's okay! You may want to wait overnight and add another top coat (or maybe more) until the nails are 98% smooth on top.
6. Finally, after all of your top coating is done, there may be the occasional sharp point sticking out from the top coat. Use a cuticle cutter stick lightly along the surface of the polish to shave those sharp tips off. Remember, the nails should be 100% dry when you do this or you risk pulling the polish. If you accidentally take a huge chunk off, just add another layer of top coat.
7. If everything was done correctly, you should have smooth, glossy-looking glass nails!

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Post sponsored by BornPrettyStore.com

Velvet Nails

I'm so late to this style of nail art, but I missed it when it first "happened" and today I found some flocking powder on the cheap so I thought I'd give it a go.

I put a thin layer of pink on my velvet-inteded nail followed by a fast drying top coat. Immediately after applying the top coat I pressed my nail into a pile of flocking powder, shook off the excess, and gently pressed the powder into the polish while looking for bald spots to cover.

The end result is really cool! It's fuzzy and certainly looks interesting without being too outrageous. I know what you're thinking--No, it doesn't last that long (about 24 hours and then it starts to shed a bit) and yes, you can wash your hands without damaging the flocking (just don't aggressively wash the nail).

Has anyone tried to apply the flocking powder with nail glue instead of polish? I might try it and see if that's a bit more durable.

How To Fix/Reinforce a Cracked or Weak Nail

Scenario: All of your nails are looking long and pretty just how you like them and then the worst happens, you do something dumb and crack your nail. It's visibly intact, but you can see that slit in the nail that going to start snagging. It's annoying and it has to go... unless you know how to fix it!

Here's an easy way to fix broken nails or even reinforce nails that have had layers removed on top and are therefore weakened.

What You Need:

• Nail glue
• A nail buffer (you may also want to use a nail file in addition to the buffer)
• A tissue with the layers separated (just pull the edges apart)

How to Do It:

1. Start with a clean, dry nail (this prevents bacteria getting trapped). If the nail's really rough, give it a few swipes with a buffer. Apply nail glue to the surface of the nail without touching skin. Make sure to cover the break in the nail. You don't have to cover the entire nail, in fact this may result in glue sticking to your skin and cause a whole mess to clean up. Stick to the center of the nail, the free edges not touching skin, and the cracked areas.
2. Take a single layer (of a 2-layered) tissue, cut out to roughly fit the size of your nail, and place it on top of the glue so that the glue permeates the tissue. If the glue doesn't go all the way through the nail, you can add more glue to the top of the tissue where it needs it. Let all of this dry.
3. File or buff off the excess tissue. Your nail should look really rough--and that's okay. Take your buffer and buff down the rough edges and surface so that the tissue is almost flush with the nail. If you do it all correctly, the tissue should end up looking and feeling very similar to your natural nail.

This isn't a permanent or ultra-strong correction for a broken nail. You should still be careful with the broken nail because it could re-break through the tissue. Other than that, this acts just like your normal nail would. You can paint over it easily, but it will most likely come off when you remove your nail polish.

Ikat Print Nails

I am loving me some Ikat... and it doesn't hurt that when applying this pattern to the nails that messy = a-okay!

These are done on a red base, followed by big black spots done with a nail art skinny brush, small white spots on top of that done with a skinny brush, an even smaller blob of grey on top of the white, and then a few teeny black dots in the center of it all.

Keys for a Successful Pattern (of any kind) on Nails:

• Keep the pattern the same size on each nail regardless of the size of the nail. 
• You can see I fell victim to this on my left hand's pinky where the center spot is smaller than the neighboring nail's dots.
• Go off the edges. 
• A border of your base color around each nail is probably going to be a dead giveaway that something's off with your pattern.
• Avoid sticking to the center. 
• Ex. If your pattern is polka dots, avoid constantly putting a dot in the center of each nail and basing your pattern off of that placement. This rule harks back to the previous one--don't be afraid of your pattern falling off the edge of your nail.

Bleeding Neon

It's all bleedin' comin' together! Here's how to do it: Paint your nails in a coat of the darker of two polishes that you want to use. Once they're all dry, going nail by nail, quickly paint one side of the nail the original base color, and then the other side of a nail a contrasting color. While both halves are still wet, take a toothpick or needle and gently (like, barely any pressure) drag lines across the border between the two colors. Boom. Done. Easy peasy.

Paint Splatter Mani

Here's a rundown of how to get these splatters: Paint your base color. Get a fairly narrow straw (clean) and dip it into your polish. Shorter straws worked better for me, just don't inhale the fumes from the polish. It doesn't have to be dramatically submerged, just enough so that there's polish on the straw (with a bit of excess). Place the straw over your nail (just in case, group two or three nails together to catch any splatters that may go rogue) and blow into the clean side of the straw with force... like the force of a sneeze, quick and fast! If it works correctly, you should have a splatter. The dark underbelly to this technique is that it's unpredictably messy. Lay out paper towels or newspaper all around to catch excess splatter. It wouldn't hurt to fashion a bib out of a paper towel to protect your clothes either.

Unrelated Note: Thanks to the blog reader in Oklahoma who used my Zoya "Share the Love" referral link! You're awesome!

Stained Glass Glitter Mani

To Get This Look: Freehand the spots of glitter. They don't have to be very geometric because you achieve that look with the black lines that go on top... which are also freehanded, but you could do this with stripping tape even though I imagine that it would be very time consuming.

Celebrate Your July 4th With the Veep!

Independence Day is just around the corner for us Americans, so I thought I'd pay tribute to our fictional VP, the "Veep" herself, Selina Meyer, and her hilarious staff members, Dan Egan, Amy Brookheimer, Gary Walsh, and Mike McClintock, with another "floating head" manicure!

To recreate this look, paint your nails any color as long as you top it off with a clear coat (I used Nails Inc.'s Holographic top coat). Then cut out whatever images you want as long as they fit within the surface area of the nail (it's not wise to have the image sit on the edge of the nail where it may become exposed to water). Put a small bit of clear coat wherever you want the image to sit and press the cutout onto the nail (you're essentially using the clear coat as glue at this point). Make sure that the cutout is sitting flush with the nail. Cover the cutout in another layer of clear coat--make sure that no dry paper is exposed (you don't even have to cover the entire nail if you're going to add the stripes, just make sure the cutout is sealed in). To make the stripes you need to paint clear tape with blue and red polish and allow it to dry. Cut the tape into strips or whatever shapes you like and apply them to the nail. Seal the entire nail with a top coat or else the polish may separate from the tape and fall off.

That's it! "Wait!" you're thinking, "But where do I get those teeny-tiny Veep heads?" Right here! Save the image below and print it out and get to making your own Veep manicure... and then post it in the comments 'cause I want to see what you guys come up with! It should print out at about 3 inches wide and 2 inches tall. And check it out--you even get a bonus Jonah option for the fans of the wise-crackin' White House liaison that I didn't use in my mani!

Click here for another one of my "floating head" manis (Doctor Who themed)!

Veep and all Veep images belong to HBO.

Tape Shapes

I got this idea after poking around on Tumblr. Basically, you paint Scotch tape, let it dry, cut it into shapes, and then use those shapes as nail stickers. It's so much easier than trying to freehand shapes with paint! This is my first attempt:

Watercolor Nails

Finally, an innovative new nail art application technique that doesn't require searching stores for some bizarre tool or impossible accessory! Aren't these extremely Easter-appropriate, albeit late? And check out those super-ridiculous close-ups! Wowza! See the link below for the easiest and most nail polish efficient tutorial ever.

Original Mani & Tutorial Found Here!

(And for all of you who are like, "I don't have that ultra-professional brush that that lady uses in the video and I can't afford one because this economy has left me poor and I just HAVE to have this look!", I just used an old lip gloss brush that I knew I'd never use again. Easy peasy.)

Lace Doily Nails

Did you see the lace doily nail tutorial on Adore Daily? From attempting this I learned that a white paper doily will melt into the background, so just go ahead and paint that thang with polish. Also, it helps to be able to embed the doily into the base polish so that it really stays secure.

Gold Leaf

The trick with gold leaf, well... if you're not going to cover the entire nail completely, is to find that balance between "strategically scattered" (left hand) and "actually, this looks chipped" (right).

The Walking Dead-inspired "Walker" (Zombie) Nails

The Walking Dead - AMC

Who's not obsessed with The Walking Dead nowadays? If you're going as a zombie for Halloween, you can't leave out the nails...after all, they are a Walker's #1 tool. This is a super quick way to make yourself look dead and rotting:

1. Start with a bare nail. Got yellow nails? Who cares?! You're a zombie!
2. Flood the cuticles with a blood-red polish.
3. Use polish remover to confine the red polish to the cuticle edge and give it a rough look. Getting as close to the red as you can without overlapping, add a coat of a sheer nude (preferably yellow based).
4. When it's dried, buff away to get rid of the shine without taking the color away.

Tie Dye Insets

After:

Before:

Marble the nails, tape over the areas you want exposed and just paint over with a solid color polish. Super. Easy.

Water Marbling for Former Failures

After many, many failed attempts at water marbling, I've finally achieved success!

Base - Zoya's Petra
Lime - Sinful Colors' Innocent
Blue - Sinful Colors' Aquamarine
Light Purple - Wet n Wild's 203A (no name -- it's a sheer nude, but over Petra it looks light purple)

Here's how to water marble:
Fill a disposable or unwanted cup with filtered, room temperature water.
With polish #1 drop a ball of the polish in the center of the water. If it's going to work the polish will spread on the surface of the water.
Drop a ball of polish #2 in the center of polish #1's spread. Continue this with the rest of the colors you want to use.
[Optional] Drop in polish #1, #2, etc., again so that a pattern of colors form (ex: red, green, blue, red, green, blue).
Take a toothpick or sharpened pencil and drag it in the polish creating the designs you want. Swirl it, drag it across, whatever, just keep in mind that what you're doing will have to fit on a small nail.
Press the nail (sometimes you can do more than one at a time, but start with one) face down on the surface of the water, continue until your nail is fully submerged, and hold it there.
Take your toothpick/pencil and remove the remaining polish on the surface of the water while your nail is still submerged.
Pull your nail out and push everything into place if you can. Voila! You're done!


Plenty of other sites have water marbling tutorials, and I suggest you watch or read a variety of them to prepare yourself before you attempt this, but here are the things that really helped me this time:

-I don't know if this is legit or just user error, but in the past I've used China Glaze, OPI, and Orly and have failed with each. So use the cheap stuff!
-Use filtered, room temperature water.
-Make sure that you use a disposable cup (or one you don't care about anymore), because it will definitely be ruined.
-If you use toothpicks, make sure there are a bunch loose and easy to grab.
-Account for not being able to use your hands for a while, because this is messy.
-To reduce the mess, you may want to cover your fingers in scotch tape.
-Move quick when adding polish to the water and swirling it around. The faster you are between steps, the more cooperative the polish will be.
-Seriously, this is messy:

But when finished, it yields an awesome result. Every nail has its own personality and you never really know what you're going to get on your nail until you pull it out of the water. I'm so glad I never gave up on water marbling because I am loving looking at my nails.

Geronimo! Doctor Who Nails!

Hello, Whovians! The time of Doctor Who is upon us and I am loving every second of it! I wanted to create the feeling of the Tardis, The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River floating in space so I put their teeny-tiny heads (each under one square centimeter) over one coat of OPI's Last Friday Night (in retrospect, I should have done another coat). It has the effect of some gel nails I've seen with objects floating in the gel, but LFN gives a flash of blue and glitter for that cosmic look.

To do this you:

1. Paint your base
2. Apply the image (printed from a computer or ripped from a magazine, etc.) while the paint is still wet
3. Hold the image down to get it to stick as best as you can (this may take a while)
4. Apply a thick top coat, and possibly another layer of top coat

D-I-Wah: Marble Nails

Earlier, the goddesses at WAH Nails posted this to their Tumblr and gears immediately started turning in my brain:

My version:

Here's how to achieve this look:
1) Paint a thickish base coat of OPI's Pamplona Purple on one nail.
2) Dab on some thick, random blobs of China Glaze's First Mate on the nail (while base coat is still wet).
3) Dab on some more random blobs of OPI's Ogre the Top.
4) Take a toothpick and start randomly swirling the paint together on the wet nail.
5) Top coat it!

Two key things:
1) "Random" is the word to live by with this. Don't try to be too uniform because it'll drive you crazy because it's nearly impossible to do.
2) If one color starts overtaking another, add another drop of whatever color is lacking while everything is wet.

Newspaper Nails - Version 2 (B&W Comics)

Newspapers seem to be successful in the nail world. My first newspaper mani has continually dominated the top spot in my "Popular Posts" column on the right. Here's a different and more colorful method to get newspaper print on your nails. Also, I'm trying out the rounded nail shape as Nonie Creme (Butter London's nail goddess) has officially declared that square nails are out!

The purple base is China Glaze's Light as Air (2 coats) and I used the comics section instead of an article, so there are images and different fonts.

How-To:

1) Paint your nails any fairly light color and let dry completely

2) Dip your nail in rubbing alcohol so that the whole nail is wet

3) Take a strip of newspaper and place it on your nail

4) Hold for about 30 seconds (longer is better if you can) without moving it

5) Peel off the newspaper

Tips:

-The print will come out backwards, so keep that in mind

-It helps to cut the strip in roughly the shape of your cuticle

You're done! This technique is so easy to do. I can't wait to try it with color comics!

The Ruffian

Using Butter London's British Racing Green and OPI's Bling Dynasty I recreated one of the most popular manicures of late, The Ruffian, with one of the most popular color combinations, green and gold. Who could resist this?

It's very easy to get the smooth edges of the gold if you have the right tool--hole punch reinforcement stickers (cut in half).

Paint on your base color and wait until it's dry, but not just dry to the touch, dry all the way through. Cut one of the stickers in half and place it on your nail where you don't want the new color to be. Apply the second color and wait about 10 seconds for the polish to settle. Then, pull away the sticker in the direction towards the new color to prevent strings of polish that may form from crossing the color border. Boom, you're done (after you apply a top coat, of course).

Wonder Woman Mani

First off, welcome new readers! If you can, make sure you follow the blog with Google Friend Connect (follow the arrow on the right side)!

Right now, the beauty world is abuzz with MAC's release of a Wonder Woman themed collection (and yes, I have already ordered one of the lipsticks which I will review when I get it). I decided to do one of my faux-Minx manis and use MAC's Wonder Woman promo images directly on my nails.

Blue nails: China Glaze's First Mate.
White star: Flexbrush's white (water based)
Red/Yellow stars: CM Nail Art

Basically, you print out an image, cut it out to roughly fit your nail and apply it to a wet layer of white polish, then file the excess paper off downward much like you would Incoco strips or Nail Rock Nail Wraps. Super easy! You will need some heavy-duty top coat though. I prefer to use an old, thick Seche Vite. Make sure to seal in all the edges, because as you can see on my thumb, water will get in there if you wash your hands or take a shower and start to bleed the colors together. This can also be bad for your nail so if you notice it happening take it off asap.

All images belong to MAC Cosmetics and DC Comics.