Stop, Nail Time!

Ugh, I'm actually making myself cringe with the title of this post, but sor some reason can't resist using it. My brain went something along the lines of ....hmm, a title for a nail varnish post, what links to nails
....well you use a hammer on nails
....hammer time (and now that song will undoubtedly reside in my head for the next 24 hours)

 and you get the rest!

Anyway, lame post titles aside I've started playing around with nail art a lot more recently. Most of my attempts are a little bit failed (I swear it's harder than it looks), but this week a little parcel of potential nail based fun arrived. I bought a selection of 50 fimo cane rods for a very reasonable price from Amazon.co.uk.

If you haven't seen these rods before, they are little tiny sticks of fimo, approx 5cm in length which you can finely slice with a sharpe blade to make teeny tiny little shapes to stick on your nails. I've seen these used before and haven't always been too fond of the effects - I like quite simple nails, so the trend to sticks lots and lots of fimo shapes on one nail, although pretty, is just not me.

The result of my first play with these canes was this:

I'm actually really happy with how they turned out, and it was a lot of fun to do - like a mini craft project on my nails! Read on if you would like to have a go at these nails yourself...



The supplies I used were:

- Fimo cane in a blue flower design
- Nail glue
- A sharp blade
- Tweezers
- Two coats of Barry M nail varnish in 306 - Pale Blue
- elf's Matte Finisher over the top of the varnish (only because I'm addicted to Matte nails!)

The first trick is to be able to cut the fimo shapes so that they are thin enough (about 0.5mm!). I practised on a cane I didn't like much, although I still think I need more practice, as some were a bit uneven.

After painting my nails and allowing them to dry completely I applied the shapes one-by-one by picking them up with the tweezers (after this project I'm fairly sure they'll never be used for hair again, so be warned!) and applying a little blob of the nail glue and quickly applying to my nail. The glue was definitely the hardest part and I'm going to try sticking with wet nail varnish next time I think! A then used the tweezers to apply some pressure to the shape until is was well and truly stuck.

I went for a random approach to the placement of the flowers as I wanted the effect of my nails being sprinkled with them.

I didn't put a top coat on as I didn't want a 'gloopy' effect around the shapes. However, these shapes lasted on my nails for three days, with only one casuality, and the rest still remained on day 4, and were only removed because I fancied a change.

The only thing I did notice was that after washing my hands the edges did start to curl up slightly on a couple. This didn't really bother me, but is something to be aware of.

To remove the shapes I soaked my nails in acetone polish remover and they all came off  with no damage to my nails underneath. I think using varnish would make this easier too though.

Right, I'm off to experiment with the other 49 shapes!