Has anyone else seen the amazing nail art that has started to come out of Japan? In some of the Gosu Rori magazines there is information about how to achieve some of the effects, but I have no idea what tools and products they're using so I'm at a bit of a loss.

Last night though I remembered that I have some nail art stencils all the way from Japan when I was there in about 1996. So I am thinking about doing something special with little sakura flowers for the Himeji event. I had a practice last night and I think if I am patient they will work quite well for something simple and cute.

Basically they are stickers that have a section punched out so you stick them to your finger nail and they form a mask. You can then paint nail polish over the sticker which goes into the section that was cut out and when it is dry you carefully peel the sticker off revealing the design.

Does anyone know of any techniques to do nail art yourself or any products that you recommend. Even brand names of nail polish because I need to get some new stuff. My old nail polishes are about 6 years old now and I've had to throw most away.

I'll see if I can take some scans from one of my magazines to show you some of the lengths the Japanese are going to including dangling charms and chains joining the finger nails, 3d effects and amazing designs. Here are a couple of images I found from Gosu Rori #3, but I don't have that volume myself so I can't get clearer pics from that one.

Now that my nails are nice, long and healthy I feel like experimenting!!

Pardon me while I squeal!

K, I LOVE the Lolita nail art as well as the slightly more toned down versions also popular with everyday girls in Japan. There are several magazines from Japan that you can purchase at Kinokuniya that specialize in nail art techniques.

Recently, I discovered a series of products from a Korean company called Konad. You buy laser etched metal plates, a rubber stamper, a scraper and special nail polishes. The plates have several designs on them that you add the nail pollish to, scrap it across the design to fill it in and remove the excess and then use the rubber stamper to pick up the image and transfer it to your nail. I do them all the time since discovering a little store in the CBD that carries that as well as the gemstones and 3D sculpted roses in different colors.

You can purchase all the stuff on Ebay as well, sometimes at cheaper prices and in bigger kits. Just look up Konad or Konad nail art.

I didn't have them done this weekend for Supanova as I didn't have time but I have normally had my nails match the costume I wear.



The top pink ones were my nails to go with the Princess Ai costume when I wore it for the first time at Sydney Animania. The bottom blue ones were just me being random and trying out my new toy. I need more pics because I actually have more designs, more practise and can do them better now.

Anyone interested, I'm planning to get some of the Japanese nail mags shortly so I can see how good they are and maybe scan some stuff in.

I would love to see some scannings from your mags!

Those little flowers are just what I means when I said "3d effects". I am definately going to look up Konad and see what I can find here. We haven't got anything like Kinokuniya here in SA as yet.

What I did find our our last Lolita meetup though which has had me thinking is a place down on Hindley street which sells accessories and they had a whole wall with magazines to flick through and a whole heap of nail art supplies, but I had no idea what I was looking at then. I will see if they stock the Konad thing perhaps!

I really like the blue designs in the pic you posted. Extremey pretty!! I love all the little hearts and start that you have painted on there.

Wow, I am so in love with this magazine! I need more! It may only cater to 'normal' Japanese girls but I would scan the whole thing if I could...but that would take a while so I will post what I've been able to scan so far, samples of the nail art shown in the mag.

Now, there's a couple things I've noted about trends with nails in Japan. Firstly, they typically wear the nails long and very squared at the tips. This seems to be to show off the nail art better and give room for 3D art and danglies. Some wear sculptured or gel fake nails and this magazine even shows art work being created IMBEDDED in the nails as they are made on the girl. The main trend, though, seems to be to wear glue on fake nails. The nails are all painted with the designs and the girls can change them as often as they change their designer hand bags. Speaking of designers, yes, they even wear nails to match their faves....from Chanel and Dior to Bulgari and Vivienne Westwood.

I also noted that often, the 3D art is made from the same materials as the gel and scuplted nails, themselves. That would make them much more durable as things that are just glued on, like my roses, can pop off under pressure. This makes them hard to wear day-to-day.


The top ones are amazing and pretty full on but the bottom ones are may fave in this set.


I don't know if I would ever wear them but the little hand painted bunnies, second from the bottom, are absolutely adorable!


This whole set is my favorite but I think the top ones are my absolute all time faves, along with the bottom two.
The ones second from the top make me think of Wedgewood china.

I have some even more intricate ones in some of my G&L Bibles, that I will scan in as soon as I get a chance.

I have heard that, because normal girls are so obsessed with fake nails and wearing them ALL the time for everything, that there is a bit of an epidemic in Japan with nail infections. One was never intended to was dishes with some of the talons these girls wear!

I know what you mean with "designer nails" I will take a scan of one of my gosu rori's soon because there are nail art examples from some of the lolita brands where each has created a style of nails to match their clothes.

I absolutely love this gothic one with a spider on the middle finger and chains coming from that onto each of the other nails.

I can only find one ebay seller for the Konad stuff but the place in Adelaide that has some japanese things was closed yesterday so I will check today. Otherwise there isn't a whole lot on ebay that does nail art this intricate and I am hesitate to buy anything because the things I have seen are either very gimicky looking or far to expensive for me to justify.

Alas, when I checked out the new little Japanese shop, no Konad, no special nail polishes, just the same stuff plus millions of stickers and decals imported from japan and korea. When I described the Konad system and asked about some of the techniques in the magazines they were displaying I got a "sorry, we only do the stickers"... bah... everywhere is doing them, whats the point! Do something different!

What do you think of this concept Chastangela? Have you seen it before?

Nail Art Machine

Ah, I have seen them! I almost bought one. They work on the exact same principle as the Konad equipment but do all the scraping and stamping for you. You just place your nail in the right spot and go from there.

This machine generally places its designs carefully in the center of the nail with lovely precision and makes for great nail designs. To me, the downside is not being able to put the nail designs all different directions on the nails...though you probably could if you used the plates outside of the machine and used a seperate scraper and stamper like you get with Konad. I also do not know how easily you can get more plates for it. Konad has about 52 plates with different designs on each one.

I'll have to post a pic...I'va also used the stamps to decorate my cell phone, along with some sparkly stickers and gems.

I did what I said in my first post and used my stencil stickers to do some nail art. The only problem I had was that the clear coat smudged the pink even after a really long time waiting for it to dry. Oh well, they still looked effective I thought.

http://www.costumewardrobe.com/gallery/v/f...G_7863.jpg.html

My friend used nail pens to do some cure little strawberries on her fingernails to match her dress for himeji. I should have got a photo of them but I didn't even think about it.

I've found that clear coats can have a tendancy to do that, depending on the type. I think you have to find one that's a lot less acetone or something to prevent that. I've been thinking of getting the one from Konad for just that reason. I think it's designed not to smudge the nail polish, would is susceptable to that do to its different make up.

I was flipping through a Japanese nail mag the other day at Kino and found something interesting. Many of the hand painted designs and what not done on the nails are done using acrylic gouache and very small paint brushes with barely any hairs in them. The gouache would come off with nail polish remover but be easier to work with for small designs. It's something I'm thinking of playing with myself...I'm not a good artist but I'm sure I can do geometric stuff and squiggly lines.

Wish I culd have seen the strawberries, bet they looked cute.

I found a site that had a couple of interesting "media" for their nail art... like gel pens. You might find some of it interesting - Gothic Nail Art