Day 20 of OMD Challenge- 3D Spiral Wire Nails

Day 20 of the Oh Mon Dieu Challenge is 3D nails!  There are so many options for this theme….and I contemplated for a long time on this one.  Since I make jewelry I kept feeling inspired to use jewelry findings to make my own 3D nail art embellishments.  I started with two coats of Zoya Zuza and then the 3D fun began……..

I used some 20 gauge silver beading wire to shape some spirals!  Crazy cool, right?  Creating spirals is a common technique for jewelry makers since they can be used in a lot of designs.  Also, spirals are used to make the cage part of a ‘caged bead’!

After I shaped my spirals I pounded them with a jewelry mallet to give them a nice hammered finish… and then bent the sides down with some pliers so they’d have a nice curved shape (like my nails do).  I stuck them on with some clear polish called My Nails Are Sealed.  I have no idea when or where I got this polish- I just know I’ve had it foreverrr and it works great to secure 3D stuff to my nails.  I’ve been wearing them for 3 hrs and washed my hands a few times too and they’re still stuck on there.  So we shall see how long they last!

So, what do you think of my crazy 3d nails?

20. 3-D Nails :

Caviar French Tips

I’ve got some cool nails for you today as part of the Nail Art Challenge!  The theme for day 23 is CAVIAR NAILS and I’m using some Nail Pearls made by Pretty Woman.   They were $7.99 at Rite Aid which seems to be a bit cheaper than other micro-beads on the market.  This little bottle of Nail Pearls has A LOT in it.  I don’t see myself running out anytime soon!

Before I posted this I did a quick google search to refresh my memory on whether or not I could use the term CAVIAR in my post.  If you have been blogging, or reading blogs for a while, then you may be familiar with all the drama surrounding the coined term ‘Caviar Manicure’.  If you’d like to read more about last year’s Caviar debate- then here’s a good summary posted by The PolishAholic.  When this debate went down I thought, “who is this Ciaté company, and why are they being such jerks?”.  A year has passed, now I’m a blogger, I’m more familiar with their products, and I still don’t own any Ciaté stuff.  HA!  Take that caviar and eat it, Ciaté!

Moving on to my non-Ciaté caviar nails mani!  I wanted to try something different… so I decided just to cover my tips with the micro-beads.  I have been lucky lately, I have had no nail breaks, my tips are all long, and they’re all the same length- so I might as well do this caviar french manicure while my luscious nails are in tact.  Geesh, I hope I didn’t just jinx myself!!

To start out I painted my nails with a sheer french manicure color from Sally Hansen and I waited for like ever for it to dry.  Then I had to figure out a way to get the caviar on just my tips… but I really wanted a clean, straight line.  So I used rubberbands!  I stretched a rubberband across my nail and kinda held it taught with my thumb and neighboring finger.  Then I applied my basecoat to just the tip and tried not to touch the clearcoat to the rubberband.  Then I poured the nail pearls over the basecoat.  A lot stuck, but there were still some bald spots… so I dunked my tip in to a shotglass with nail pearls in it and kinda smushed my finger down into the pearls to really get them to stick.  The rubberband worked as a nice little shelf that the beads could push up against to form a straight line.  When I released the rubberband I used a dotting tool to re-position any of the pearls that weren’t straight.  The instructions said after 20 seconds to push down on the pearls- so I did that too.  After a few minutes the basecoat dried and my pearls were stuck on better than expected.  The rubberband thing worked pretty well!  As you can see, I got a nice clean line of beads!  Hopefully sometime soon I can post more about all the other wonderful nail art uses for rubberbands. 😀

I quickly took some pics and even though my nails were cute and the pearls were secured well enough, I couldn’t wait to get them off!  If I left them on… I envisioned myself leaving little little trails of pearls every where I went.  Like a modern day Hansel and Gretel.  LOL!  I’d like to try it again sometime… but I just wasn’t feelin it today.

What’s your opinion on caviar manicures?

Silver Feather Fowl Play

Day 17 of Julie’s April nail art challenge is dedicated to 3D nail art!  I love that this nail art challenge makes me try new things. I don’t have a lot of nail embellishments in my stash so my best bet was to think outside the box!  I have a lot of jewelry findings and beads so surely I’d be able to find something to decorate my nails with.  When sifting through my beads I came cross these lovely silver-plated feather charms from Fire Mountain Gems.  I used to love these things!  I don’t make myself a lot jewelry- usually I give it to family and friends…but I made myself these aqua chandelier earrings with the silver feathers and they turned out to be my absolute faves!  I wore them all the time!  Until I lost them 😦   Here’s a pic of them on the left.  I really should make myself another pair… but first, lemme put these feathers on my nails!  I cut them with my wire cutting tool and secured them to my painted nails with a clear top coat.  They looked really awesome, but I kept scratching myself with them!  So I didn’t get to wear them too long lol.

If you are wondering about my purple base color… it’s called Fowl Play by Orly and it’s part of their Birds of a Feather Collection from 2011 maybe.  It has a dark purple jelly base with a thick suspension type formula… and it’s got all kinds of crazy shimmer, micro glitter and small flakies.  Lotsa colors in here!  I like deep complex colors like this.  In fact, the whole Birds of a feather Collection is beautiful- check out Orly’s promo shot for the collection.  Don’t you love this bright metallic peacock blue polish that the model is wearing?  I know this collection is old news… but this blue is so pretty!  And so is my purple Fowl Play- I hope you like it too!

Embellished Nail Polish Easter Egg

I love painting easter eggs with nail polish- it’s my new fave spring project!  If you’d like to see my first attempt here’s the link to my other egg.  My first egg was decorated with just nail polish.  But today’s egg has a few other embellishments- fimo clay flowers and beads on top!

I took a few days to complete this egg because I’d paint a section… then wait for it to dry.  Then paint another section and wait for that to dry.  I set the egg on a soda cap while it was drying.  I also added some orange fimo clay nail art flowers and stuck them on with some clear nail polish.

Since I drained my egg before I painted it… it had a nice little whole on top which was perfect to slide a eyepin into (an eyepin is the metal stick that jewelery-makers use to slide beads onto when making drop earrings).  I simply placed two silver beads onto the eyepin and then slid the pin into the whole on the top of my egg.  I secured it with glue so they wouldn’t slip out.  I really like the beaded accent on top- it adds a nice touch and almost makes it look victorian.

I hope you get a chance to do some spring crafts too!  I can’t believe Easter is tomorrow!

In recent news, I have set my blog up on the Bloglovin site!  So if you use Bloglovin to view your favorite blogs- then you can add Craftynail to your list of followed blogs by clicking this link-  Follow my blog on Bloglovin!

If you have not yet setup a Bloglovin account then you can read about it here – I think it’s a great way to view all your favorite sites in one spot!