September 28, 2011

Nail Art

Hello peeps...How have you been? Hope the new week has been treating you well...


Today I want to share with you everything (almost) on Nail Art. I was amazes when recently a friend of mine sent me a video of Nail Art. It is no longer a simple painted flowers or stickies that you just paste on your freshly coated nails!!!! It is way more than that and it is beautiful. Great minds have come up with using Nail as a canvas to express themselves. It can be in Bold colours like this






Or it can be elaborate such as this 




It even gets very complicated and artistic....






It is all up to your imagination and creation...!!!!


I am totally amazed at the artistic talent that are displayed by these individuals and after a further research, Nail Art is being considered as a Elective Subject as part of a Degree Course!!!!


Definitely it is not easy. It needs patience, good sense of colour combinations, quick and clean strokes, elegant and delicate use of Nail Art tools and a good creative imagination as well. There is a definite trend currently that is booming well in Korea and Japan. Youtube has many video clips of individuals who show of simple to complicated design. There are many books in teaching you simple steps on "How to" and giving tips as well.


I tried my hand at it. Well, not a natural artistic person, I realised, I will start of on a simple pattern. For a starter, my nails are not too long as seen in these pictures. There are many ways to lengthening your original nails. Several techniques have been developed (apart from having to grow one's nail) such as ,  Acrylic System which adds PH Bond to apply artificial nails to your own and look like natural nails. This definitely gives you a instant length to your current nails and they look nice too. But there had been several stories suggesting that the bonding glue can harm your own nails if the technique has not been applied well. It also depends on the types of glue and chemicals used by the Nail salons that can further damage your nails causing irreversible damaged nails which will never look the same again. I, for one, would not like to add these to lengthen my nails and so I took a couple of weeks to grow out my nails. I used the basic steps of buffering and filing to prep the nails for the final step.


Since this was a trial, I managed to scavenge cheap nail polish (although they turned out really good and nice) that were sole for Buy 2 and get 1 free for $5 at Sasa Singapore outlet at Nex Shopping Centre. But As I did not want my nails to turn yellowish as some nail polish does that to your nails, I decided to splurge on a good Top & Base Coat applicator. So I bought the Sally Hansen's Top & Base Coat applicator which cost me a whopping $21for 13ml bottle.


My attempt was not so bad for a first timer. I will upload pictures soon. I had  realised that for one to get lovely designs on their nails, they should have a steady hand, not shaky like mine. My flowers at times looked very nicely painted but most of my nails had this smudged flower looks. But I loved my teal coloured background on my nail. Being a medium chocolate honey skinned, teal was not so bad. I normally stick to the safe colours like dark red, maroon and pinkish tones. But this teal looked fresh and brightened up my hands.


Overall, this was a great experiment. I was less stressed and kind of enjoyed the whole artistic feel to it. But whether I will do it often?...ummm...Nah. I rather be pampered at the nail salon while I just relax. This takes a lot of patience and definitely a good drawing skill as well. But I may make my nails unique for special parties like Halloween, Dinner & Dance, special company functions and birthdays. Cos Salon provides limited varieties and they really don't care if you brought them a drawing for them to paint on your nails. So, Yup I will do this nail art for special occasions.


For those who are interested in YouTube videos, have a look at this by cutepolish - http://www.youtube.com/user/cutepolish. She has simple and beautiful designs that anyone can follow. She also shows a wonderful Nail art technique called water marbling. It is really cool.  Her latest angry bird is something I want to try next...


Enjoy unleashing your creativity and artistic side =)

Mahesh