How not to put on water decals

Let me preface this by saying that if you follow my blog, which I mean thank you I really suck at this, you probably picked up on the fact that I don't do a lot of nail art. There are a lot of beautiful things out there that I just do not have the patience for. That said, I was really stoked when the very kind people at Born Pretty were nice enough to send me some stuff I wanted. Score. One of the items I chose was this set of water decals.

Beautiful Finger *winks* Here are the instructions on the back.

Ah yes, the trials and tribulations of Reece and the waterfinger.

I trimmed, cleaned and polished my fingernails (Sally Hansen Grass Slipper). My cuticles are looking haggard btw. They were much worse before. I have been spending some quality time with Bag Balm, Korres lotion and those cotton sleeping glove thingies, which are surprisingly comfortable.

Anyhoo, I cut up my desired flowers, peeled off the plastic and soaked it in the water.

I then placed it onto my nail, like a temporary tattoo I figured.

RONG.

Please note that I actually did not want the picture face down with a nice white backing to display. Not the look I was hoping to achieve.

Thankfully, these things are pretty frigging hardy. I eventually worked out a method of sliding them off the backing, letting them float around and then fishing them out and working them into place. 

I did attempt to position my finger underneath and sort of try and catch them, but that was futile. Like I said, they are pretty hardy, so I could just sort of fish them out and work them onto my finger without ruining them. Though, at some point, they find a place to stay and decide they want to stay there. Alternately, sometimes you find a place you want them to stay and then they slip around. Your fingers need to be wet for these to really move. Once you have them in place just touch it gently with a paper towel to soak up the excess water. They say to blow dry them... I think you know what ain't nobody got time for. 

So here is what I ended up with. In hindsight (20-20) I would have put the leaves on first, but I am pretty pleased in general. Topcoat wasn't an issue. Slid right on. No wrinkling. No colour seeping into the topcoat.

Why a red fingers?

I was able to actually slide a yellow flower over top of that botched backwards job I had done previously.

I am super happy with these. They are pretty reasonably priced at $2.37 USD for the package and they have a bunch of other cool cheap stuff that is worth taking a look at. Shipping is free. I thank them kindly for sending these to me. My friend, Jenny, over at Lavish Layers has done a bunch of fun stuff with them too and I had been meaning to try them, so this was just great timing altogether. I have a discount code thingy at the bottom for 10% off, but I think that there are better codes floating around in the ether if you wanted to hunt them down. Not 100% on that though.