Tutorial: Pied-de-poule nail art with Konad

Chickenfoot stamp nails!

I'm not attempting to cast an optical illusion to your eyes, and I haven't been smoking.

Pied-de-poule or pied-de-coq (chicken foot, or rooster foot) stamps are (usually) black and white stamps used on tissues, including haute couture trends for winter seasons. They're called like that, because they look like some drunken chicken walked all over a white tissue and created a geometric pattern, apparently. In french, because of course.

Yeah, mine are greenish-windows-98 blue. Because anarchy, that's why.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!

No, I haven't drawn all that crap in my nails finger by finger, do I actually look like someone with such patience?

Konad Nail Art Plaques

Not gonad, you immature thing. Konad. 

Maybe this is cheating. I think it's awesome. Konad Nail Art consists on a kind of nail-stamping method. Yes, you can find it on eBay. But pretty much any nail shop these days has Konad (or fake wannabe konad) kits. They cost from U$ 10 to U$ Depends-on-how-many-plaques-you-want. The normal kit comes with 1-2 plaques, the stamp tool, the plaque holder and the scraper.

But you can buy plaques and kist straight from their online shop here, too. The pink hurts my eyes, but their stuff is great.

Calm down, I'll explain everything step by step so you don't get lost.

 01) Paint nails

I tought this was pretty obvious. But after you sand your nails, kill your cuticles or simply push them, and do all the preps, pick a color that suits you best and paint your nails.

I've chosen the, as mentioned on the tiny picture subtitle above, green-blue Windows 98 color as background, AKA, Risquè's Husky color:

I apologize if my cuticles look a little butchered. The weather here made my hand's skin rather dry and for me the only way to put them back in shape is by doing my nails normally until they get used to being treated again.

02) Stamping Kit

Your nail stamping kit will have the following objects:

1-  Stamp Plaque of choice

This is  a full-nail stamp, which I've used to achieve the effect. There are plenty of images you can choose from, some are french nail, stamped french nail, any cute pic you can imagine, fleur-de-lis, flowers, retro stamps, lines, squares... You can check the models from Konad website here. There are 3 series of stamps released so far. I only have 8. Lol.

2- Plaque holder

You can live without it, yes, but, it makes much easier to use the stamps if you have it, because you gotta scrape the polish off the plaque, and if you don't have a holder, polish gets everywhere. You can use a newspaper or a plastic meat board to replace it, but it's still slippery or messy compared to simply usign the holder. Most kits already have the holder with them.

3 - Polish Scraper

You'll understand what's this for in some seconds, don't worry. But basically this removes the excess polish and allows you to actually use the stamp.

4 - The stamp tool 

It's a simple two-sided rubber stamp. This is the epitome of how clever this product kit is. The polish draw adheres to the surface and then transfers to your nail. Some kits have only the big side. The small, green bottom is used for small details like flowers and such. For the whole nail, like I'm doing on this one, you gotta use the big, pink side.

03) Stamping 101

1 - Apply the polish to the plaque

I have two favorite black nail polishes, this one - China Glaze's Liquid Leather, and Chanel's Les Vernis, Black Satin. Since I keep the Chanel out for"I won't spend this preciousness on nail art application", I went for my beloved L.L.

Here's why: You gotta apply a generous layer of the polish, covering the stamp you've chosen completely. You have to be quick with this, so it may take a couple of tries until you get the stamping right. If you're too slow, the polish will dry on the plaque - specially if it's China Glaze, they have quick dry ingredients - and you'll have to start over. 

Tip:  Always choose strong polish if you want a solid effect of the stamp. If you choose semi-transparent nail polish, the stamp will not show clearly on your nails.

02 - Scrape the excess of polish 

Take the weird thingy I've shown you before and run it over the plaque, leaving only the polish in the gaps of the stamp. Make sure to make a single, parallel and sleek move, so the stamp will be consistent. If you push it down, it's gonna be more transparent on your nail.

03 - Copy & Paste the stamp

Yeah, it's like Ctrl+C Ctrl+V, handmade:

Press the stamp tool on the plaque (see how the holder has the excess of polish on it, and the stamp is filled with black polish)

You'll get something like this:

Then, roll it over the nail, from left to right (or whatever, right to left) so you cover the whole nail with the stamp.

04 - Repeat x10

(Unless you have some missing fingers)

CLEAN UP! Every time you repeat the process so all your nails are stamped, remember to clean the stamo tool and the plaque with cotton soaked in polish remover. Otherwise, the leftover of stamp will, on the plaque, not allow another perfect copy, and on the stamp tool, will overlay the stamps you applyed to other fingers.

05 - Finishing:

There's gonna be some excess paint around your nails. Just like in the other tutorial, use a stick, metal or wooden, with a cotton rollled around it, soaked in polish remover, and wipe out the excess.

At last, apply a clear, shiny top coat, or a 100% clear polish on top of the whole deal. Otherwise the stamp will wear out. Make sure the stamp is totally dry before applying the top coat, otherwise it will blend with the clear polish.

Ta-daa!

There, your nails are done.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, geeky fashionista minions. 

Maybeon the next tutorial I'll make another mess and teach you how to make "english" nails (frenchies gone wild).

And also, before i forget, happy "I have boobs" day!

I solemnly swear I will not make a post with pink animated glittering animated gifs. But I might post something today about Women's Day.

Friday 13 Nails~ China Glaze' Black Mesh Swatch

***It's friday, friday, gotta get dow...***

*Shoots*

LET'S ROCK! \m/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW_9SGrc4Oo

Dear Clannies, you know how much i'd love stabbing you for singing Rebecca Black during friday raids.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In honor of our beloved black cats, shattered mirrors, red moons and so on, i decided to make some

Friday 13 Nails~

(Click to zoom)

China Glaze Crackle - Black mesh + Colorama Single Layer - Rosa Divino



The Process:

I like to use a nice bright polish for base for the crackle. Picking a strong color that usually cover nicely with one layer does the trick. Her eon Brazil we have a special Single-Layer line from colorama. It's mostly reds, and theres different crazy colors from the Watercolour line.
You can also use China Glaze polishes themselves, they have a pretty strong colorbase too.



You can of couse, use a normal double-layer polish then apply the crackle, but i'm not abig fan of waiting, and the base polish doesn't have to be flawless for the effct working, but it must be very well dried out.

As you see, I didn't even bother taking the excess off. The crackle leaves some too, and making it before the crackle only doubles your work.



Crackle Up



To apply the crackle, don't worrie about making a neat layer of polish. The more heterogen the layer, the more cracks you'll get on it. Just make sure it's not too thin, or it won't crack, neither cover well, and it will look merely like a 5 year old painted them.


Wipe the Excess

The perfect stick:

I love this two-sided cotton stick that i found in a local store.



One of the sides is normal, just to take the excess off at the moment you apply the fresh polish.



The other side has a spiral where you can attack the cotton. That helps a lot because it's eternaly reusable and it's not too hard to remove the cotton, but it doesn't come off as you spin it either.



Final Touch



As you see, the crackle post-dryign looks rather matte. I like matte effects, but not on this case, because you can still see the shine from the polish below.

You can either apply a matte top coat or a shiny top coat. I went for the shiny one:


When it comes to nail treatment, Sally Hansen has it all.

When it says its insta-dry and anti-chip, you can believe it. She's like a Nails Jesus.

Around here her things ar epretty expensive, so most of the american and european products, I get from eBay.

I should indeed make a post about my eBayous adventures. I have so much stuff from there! And its really worth the purchases, you just gotta get the eBay flare.

This is how the nails get after the Top Coat:


And that is it!


Stay tuned from the Tactic side of the screen, I will be posting why does friday 13 exists!

XoXo~

Eollica°~

China Glaze's 2nite - Less sleep, more spaz! - Swatch

As my first self-instructing post, this will be a Plastic one.


Are you familiar with those amazing multicolor gift wraps?

Ever since I was a child, I was amazed by them.

Caught at my grandma's house, staring at them - She tends to keep away the papers for later wraps - I started to wonder... Somebody needs to make a paint out of this.

A few months later, I started looking up blogs, that added a lot to my polish addictions. And then I saw them.

Holographic Nail Polish.



Needless to say, I died a little bit when I saw them for the first time at lacquerized.

And decided i MUST HAVE ONE OF THOSE.

Then I went to my newest best online friend, looking for them aimlessly: eBay.

In Brazil, its pretty much impossible to find any of the brands that offeed the holographic polish: Nfu-Oh, China Glaze, and I believe Opi too. It was my first time buying online polish but I didnt care; I was lucky enough to find a seller with 2nite, the gray-silvery one, available for U$ 3,99 , while all the other sellers had them up to U$ 18 each.

What can I say? Quoting the writer of Unha Bonita
I was risking my life wearing it, staring at my nails under the sun in the middle of the street~




2nite is a very metallic, silver blue toned polish, while in shade. When the light hits it, it turns out to have the amazing rainbow shade. China Glaze's polish is great for having the sparkle while at the same time, it shimmers like a high quality lacquer. You can have the effect and coverage with a single layer of polish, but I wear two to intensify the color.

I shall soon post the watch of my second Holographic, LOL, a lilac purpleish one.

Also, soon I will post about color changing nail polish! Yes, you read that right.


01111000 01101111 01111000 01101111

(I used this site to translate "Xoxo" to binary code. Online geek pals, please warn me if it's a scam!! lol~)