Hi Goddesses
I promised you a few special posts for Celebration 500 Month, and this is the first - Acid Nails. I used being off last week as an opportunity to try both things I hadn't tried, things I'd wanted to do for ages and also a couple of "oooh I wonder what happens if ...." type things :)
Acid Nails is achieved using acetone and layers of nail varnish. You might think all the layering makes it take ages, but actually, no, I didn't think it was too bad. We're going to talk next week about Recycled Nails and this is a GREAT Day 2 mani.
So, I'm going to go into instruction mode :) Your first step is a normal mani - so, base coat, 2 coats of a polish, and top coat. For my base I used Albert Place from Nails Inc, a great intense baby blue that I'm using a lot at the mo (mainly cos it's opaque in 1 coat).
Once your mani has dried, you can then start applying layers of polish. I'd suggest you want at least 3, but you can have more. As this was my first try, I learnt lots on this mani, like who knew orange over even pale blue would create such an amazing rust colour? I loved the colour, but it over-dominates this mani.
Also, there's a red polish in there too. Pardon ? You can't see it? No, me either, and that's because I put it on top of the orange - once I started doing acetone magic, they were just too close in colour to be distinguishable. Finally, I did a coat of Orly Charged Up on the top. I only used 1 layer of each of the colours that went on over the top coat - I know people who have used more than 1 layer, and I think there are times when it would be a good idea. It's all about experimentation.
So, once your polish is dry, you start playing. I just want to point out at this stage, that the only top coat you should have put on is the one over the first colour - no more after that! The reason is that TC is a barrier. You need to preserve the bottom colour (unless you want to eat through all the colours and show some nail), but using it in between the other colours will make your next job impossible.
Now the fun part. Take a cotton bud, dip it in acetone, and swipe, press, whoosh all over your nails. More pressure will eat through more layers of polish, less pressure will eat through fewer. Make sure tho that you don't put acetone all over your nail as you'll have no top colour left!
I went for random patterns, and I like what I ended up with. Partly this looks quite Aztec to me, but it also reminds me of oxidised copper due to that rusty orange and the pale blue. I love the distressed look it gives off.
There is one however .... now that I've experimented, next time I'd vary my technique and use "implements" of differing thicknesses - so a thin brush, a medium brush, maybe even a dotting tool or cocktail stick ....
So there you go. Next week I'll have another version for you that's appearing as a guest post on another blog.
Til then, enjoy xx :)
