I've been looking for this type of nail art lately because I saw how nice it looked on a friend's nails. To my delight, I finally found it! So what better occasion than to decorate my nails in time for Chinese New Year.
First of all, if you've never heard of this water slide nail decal, its basically like a nail sticker, except its non adhesive. It works by immersing the cut out design in water for a few seconds then sliding the image off and onto your nails. Sounds hard? Trust me, its not! I love using the regular nail art stickers as a fast and cheap solution to decorate my nails for special occasions. However, getting the stickers off the backing plastic and correctly placing them on your nail can be quite hard. Most of the time, once the sticker is on your nail, its almost impossible to remove without ruining your newly painted nail. The thing I love about this water slide nail decal is, you can still move the image around to the position you want it, while your nail surface is still wet
(I'll explain a little more about this technique further down).
Ok, from the packaging it looks like a regular nail art sticker. Even the directions at the back tell you to peel off and stick on. Those directions are wrong! Trust me ;) .
First of all, you'll need to cut up the images into individual sections like the picture below.
If an image is too big for your nail, you can cut it smaller like what i did below.
This only works for some of the images because some can't be cut as the flower overlaps another.
Once that's done, prepare a little container with water and paint your nails. When your nails are dry to touch, you can start applying the nail decal.
1. Soak the selected cut out piece in water. I count to 10 and take it out.
2. You can move the image around on its backing paper to get it to the right position. Slide the image down so that a little part of it is off the edge of the paper.
3. Wet your nail ( I simply dunked my finger into the little container of water). Place the image where you want it to go on your nail. Remember the little part of the image that was sticking out? Place that part directly in contact with your nail.
4. Slowly slide the backing paper off, leaving the image behind. This part can be a little tricky if you're doing it on your own, but with practise you'll get the hang of it! I managed to decorate both my hands by myself :D.
5. Since your nail is wet, you can still slide the image around until you're satisfied with the positioning. This part only works IF your nail is wet. Once you're happy with the position, gently dab it dry with a tissue. Once its dry, the image will be set on your nail. You can add more images to your nail once the first image is set.
6. Finish off with a layer of top coat.
Wanna give it a try? Look out for my next post to purchase!