Hello ladies! Today I'm reviewing a nail art product, sent to me by
Born Pretty Store who sell a wide range of
Nail Art supplies. The product they sent me are these super pretty ultra-thin gold foil 3D nail decals (
http://www.bornprettystore.com/30pcsset-ultrathin-snowflake-deer-design-charming-nail-decoration-p-16678.html). I enjoyed playing with these and learned some handy tips for application that I'll share with you.
First, let's get some details. These decals are 4mm wide, and made of ultra-thin gold foil (the bronze colour you see below is the back). These come in a small resealable plastic baggy which keeps them nice and flat. Because of their thin profile, they are fairly bendy to wrap to the shape of your nail. Pictured here I'm wearing them with A-England 'Camelot' (black) and OPI 'From Me to Q' (red) to show you the contrast, and a generous coat of Essie 'Good to Go' topcoat to seal them in.
How to Apply:
you will need: your decals, your chosen colour polish, a good topcoat, a blunt pointy object (like a dotting tool, I used a plastic headed pin), and a little dish of water
Start by applying your usual base coat and your chosen colour. When your final colour coat is still fairly wet, wet the tip of your pointy object and tap it onto the decal to pick it up. Gently deposit the decal on your nail, but don't push down much. When your colour is
almost dry, just slightly tacky, you can gently use your blunt pointy tool to press around the edges of the decal to bend them to the shape of your nail and stick them to the polish. Be careful though - if you do this too soon, your colour will pool up and flood over the top of the decal. When you're happy with the shape, apply a thick layer of topcoat to seal it.
I found out by trial and error the best way to apply these, but I have left the errors in my picture so you can learn from my mistakes! In the picture below you can see that I didn't wait until my colour was dry enough before applying topcoat and the colour smeared across the decal. If you can, use a non-smearing topcoat.
In this picture you can see that I didn't press firmly enough on the edges to stick them into the base polish, as a result the decal is not sitting flat against the nail. You might have to try a few times to find exactly the right level of tacky-ness to stick the decal without flooding it.
Conclusions
This is the first time I have tried 3D decals, and they make an easy pretty effect for those of us that can't paint a freehand Picasso on our nails. Personally I would prefer a smaller decal, so that I could fit several on each nail. Application was easy when I got the hang of it, but I did find that even through thick topcoat the sharp edges still peeked out a tiny bit, which was enough for them to get caught on my clothing and to feel a bit scratchy. I think this might be due to the design - the snowflake has very spiky edges, perhaps a smoother edged decal would not catch as much.
Shopping at Born Pretty
These products were sent to me for review, but I have previously purchased nail art supplies from BPS. They have a massive selection of nail art supplies for really low prices (typically just a few dollars), and they provide free worldwide shipping. The only downside of that is that shipping time can be quite long, my order took about 4 weeks to arrive which I gather from nail forums is fairly typical. So, BPS is a great place to grab a bargain, but be sure to order well in advance of when you might need something,
BPS have kindly provided me with a discount code
PFT10K31 for all my readers to receive 10% off. You can use the code as many times as you like.
