Crystals and Gems

I think I may actually own the world’s largest collection of nail crystals that any single person has, and I really struggle with getting them out and practicing, because when I assemble them on a nail, they look shit.

I have recently purchased loads more and finally, finally, decided to try and find some tutorials online and be brave enough to have a go. Pintrest has loads of them.

I grabbed a few ideas and put them on a page in Corel Draw, printed them out and started. The above are the results.

Mid way through I realised that I needed a torch to flash cure the gems as moving the tips down to my big lamp invariably meant that the gems had moved by the time I got them to the lamp – on the top centre nail above – the right hand caviar beads is not where it should be. Not the end of the world on a practice tip, but boy would that pee me off on my actual nail.

I used a nice neutral pink for the base colour, Guibofu 063 I think, and started, top left, with the simplest design I could find on the bottom right example sheet. That got me onto the centre nail, still simple, but using a square gem this time and adding caviar beads.

To use the caviar beads I added some to base coat and picked them up with a fine brush, then moved them round to get them where I wanted them. This is the point that I realised that a flash cure was going to be essential to keep the gems where I wanted them to be.

For the top centre I wanted to go for something more substantial and I had a set of champagne coloured gems from Temu with all the sizes and shapes I needed, so picked out this design and went for it. Initially I started at the top with a larger size caviar bead, during the design I decided to give smaller ones a go and they worked so much better.

Once the gems are in place I cure for a full 60 seconds, and then top coat, trying to touch all the gems, but not go over the top of them and cure again to really secure them in place.

A little while ago I bought some crystals from Crystal Parade when they were having a sale. In part of the sale there were some Pave nail crystal templates, and I have been wanting to try these, but not brave enough. I have a lot of crystals, but not sure I want to waste them.

Today was the day. I got 2 in the sale, a heart design, and a straight line. I went for the heart design and used a stamper to pick them up once they were all in the template. I applied base coat and cured to the tip to make it sticky, and then stamped the final design onto the sticky layer when I was happy they were all in the right place and aligned ok.

I applied the top heart, and thought there was plenty of space so tried another colour and size of crystal on the same nail tip further down. I had some caviar beads left in gel so positioned a few around in different shape patterns to have a little practice at freehand designs.

I am in love with crystals, so I think there will be a lot of these practice nails coming through over the next few months.