Friday, January 11, 2013

Experimenting with acrylic paint for nail art


      I wanted to share with you my experience with nail art using acrylic paint instead of polish. I've been following quite a few nail pages for about a year now and have been utterly impressed with some of the designs you talented folks come up with. I've made a few attempts at recreating looks and trying techniques, some successful and some not. One of my frustrations has been with how to get the polish design to really stand out from the base color. Especially when doing the one stroke flower technique.
    You can see my first attempt at the one stroke flower using nail polish only here.

    I'd make my petal and it would be barely visible so I'd go over it again. Carefully loading the polish onto my brush, slowly lowering the brush down onto the nail and,  of course, my second stroke wouldn't line up with the first. Id get frustrated and the whole design would go downhill from there. I know quite a few people do their nail art with acrylic paint and have read several times that it was easier to work with than regular polish. So I sat down and watched video after video on youtube and decided to give it a try myself.

   Now I have to tell you that I planned this whole thing out the night before while I should have been sleeping....please tell me I'm not the only one who does this. I didn't mean to. My brain just sort of refused to stop thinking about it. It started out with picturing myself trying to make a specific petal stroke. The colors I wanted to use suddenly were there. It was the easiest time I've had choosing colors for a manicure in my life! Then I started to picture how I would make leaves behind the flower and finally the base color started to form. Basically, I thought up the entire thing backwards. The next day at work felt like 3 while I waited for the hours to pass so I could attempt this miraculous piece of art Id spent hours thinking up the night before. In my head, I had a masterpiece and was convinced Id pictured each and every stroke so many times there was no way it would turn out differently. Ha Ha, the joke is on me.

Image from head on

Image from the side

     After looking through all my polish for the perfect one to match the base color I had pictured in my head, sorting through the crate of acrylic paint for just the right colors, mixing a few together to get the right shade I think I'm all set. Polish is applied to my nail wheel top coated and fully dry. And what is the next thing I do? My very first stroke with the acrylic is at the wrong angle. *cringe* But I'm so  excited to get this idea onto a nail that I just keep going and don't realize it until I'm all done and admiring my work.

   I do actually like the way this turned out, even if its not the masterpiece I had imagined. I would highly recommend trying nail art with acrylic paint. It really was much easier to work with than just polish alone. I'm already thinking up my next attempt.

   Have you done nail art with acrylic paint?

2 comments:

  1. Holy bejeebers, there's no way I would have thought that was your first attempt if you hadn't mentioned it! This is SO beautiful!

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    Replies
    1. Awe thank you! =) I think doing it mentally so many times before I picked up a brush helped a lot.

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