Thursday, January 12, 2012

Tutorial - Feather Manicure

 
Feather Manicure

Here is just a quick tutorial of how to do a Feather manicure! I have the tools shown below that you will need with the exception of a pair of manicure scissors that made the fine feather trimming much easier!

These were real pheasant feathers sent to me by my dear friend Laurie. You can use any feather obtainable at a craft store. My next one will be with Peacock feathers!
 



Here are some variations you can do. Different angles and parts of the feathers.
If you look at my ring finger, you can actually see where I tried some of the down part of the feather. My whole nail was a fluff ball until I clear coated it!
Here are the supplies although I would highly recommend using some sort of nail glow to adhere the feathers. I tried using CND stickey and while it served the purpose, I think it would be SO much easier with glue!!!

I first put on a base coat of CND Stickey, then topped it with Orly Night Owl as my base color.
I chose my feathers and cut them down to nail sizes. They are not exact, the trimming will come when I stick them on.
After putting on a coat of stickey (one nail at a time) you then lay the feather how you would like it to appear. Feel free to press it on in various areas. You will fine that the base of the feather's vein is your most difficult opponent. This and the stiffer edges are where teh glue would have come in handy. The lighter feather parts stick perfectly with CND Stickey. You will also find that if you form the edges with you nail edges, it serves less difficult than all of the trimming :)
Here is the same nail, after Seche Vite and before filing the edges.
Another nail as I lay it on before trimming...
A side by side of a nail that has been trimmed and SV'd as well as one just being laid on. Work one nail at a time :) After you have stuck, trimmed and given each feather a coat of Seche Vite, let them dry. After they are dry, you can use a file to clean up your edges. Then apply your final Seche Vite coat :)
This is the first nail I did, my left thumb. I like how it turned out. On this nail you can see my base color through the feather.
My other thumb has some unique pattern and coloration, although I didn't get as clear of a picture on this one.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I would love to see pictures of all of your feather manis, feel free to leave me comments with your links! :)

3 comments:

  1. FANTASTIC step by step tutorial! I know it took someone *cough* *cough* 2 hours when she did this because she had no clue what the french she was doing!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh wow! These turned out great. I still need to try it with the feathers Laurie sent me!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ahhhhhhhh! i must get my hands on feathers to try this!!

    ReplyDelete