HOW TO: NAIL POLISH ROSES

Thanks to Jackie for reminding me that I haven't done my nail polish rose tutorial! I got this idea from the roses that I had seen made out of pipe cleaners and Hershey kisses. Last Valentine's day I got the great idea that, hey, I can do this with nail polish. It turned out great, and I must say one of the best brain farts I have had :) The best part is these are super simple to do and not very time consuming at all.

THIS IS EVERYTHING YOU NEED:

The items above are shown for making a full bouquet in a vase. If you are just making single roses to give, then obviously you won't need all of the items I have shown.


Fake Roses with leaves. Any kind will do.


Florists Tape (for a 12 roses I used about 2 rolls of tape)


Florists Wire (this is optional and I will explain below)



A package of wooden plant stakes.



STEP ONE:
Cut off several inches of the florists wire. You will use this to wrap around the bottle of nail polish and wooden florist stake. I did this on all of the roses last year, however this year I found that the florists tape held the nail polish bottles just fine. So experiment on what works for you!!

The wooden stakes have a pointed end and a blunt end. You will attach your nail polish bottle UPSIDE down to the blunt end if you are planning on using in an arrangement, thus leaving the sharp end exposed to stick into the foam for arranging in a vase.

If just giving out as singles, attach the nail polish bottle upside down to the sharp end so it can be covered with tape and not exposed to stick anyone.



Again, this step may be skipped if you think the florist tape will hold your bottle to the stake just fine. This is just a reinforcement to help keep it held tight.



STEP TWO:
You need to cut the leaves off of your roses. Cut them off individually, leaving as much stem on them as you can. Have these ready to use when needed.



STEP THREE:
Taping the bottles. Now you are ready to start taping up your bottles. Starting at the top, start twisting and wrapping with your florists tape. Don't be stingy with it!! Make sure you wrap it up nice and tight, going over the same area more than once. I light to wrap all the way past the top / handle of the nail polish bottle for a more seamless look. Florists tape is anything BUT stiff, it is very easy to work with and very forgiving, if you place it where you don't want it, it can easily be pulled up and re-stuck in a new position. I fold it down an around the tops of the bottles and re-wrap to make it look nice.




STEP FOUR
Adding the leaves. Once you are done with wrapping the handle you are ready to move down the rest of the stick and add leaves. I added two leaves to each bottle, you of course could add more or less depending on what you think looks best. Be mindful that there is a top side and a bottom side to the leaves. You want the top side to show, so place the top side down against the stick and bottle of polish, with the stem placed along the stick. (You will see that I did it the wrong way in the pictures below, ooops!) Now just continue to wrap with florist tape, wrapping around the stick and stem of the leaf.




STEP FIVE
After adding a second or third leaf following the directions in step 4, you are now complete. I continue wrapping the tape almost to the bottom of my florist stake. I wrap my stake about a 1/4 of the way from the bottom, so that it is mostly taped, but not all the way, so that I could easily stick them in the foam base that I had.




That's it!! You have now made your very own nail polish rose!


If you want to make a whole bouquet, you will need:
A vase with a wide open neck.
A foam base.
Decorative rocks or moss to hide the foam base.


Place the foam base in the empty vase, stick in your nail polish roses and any fake roses if you want to add to the finished bouquet. Since I already had the roses left from cutting the leaves off I added them to the finished bouquet. Pour in decorative rocks (or place moss, whatever you want to use) to hide the foam base and tada!! A bouquet any woman in her right mind would dismantle, tear and shred upon receiving!!

HANDMADE CUPCAKE ORNAMENT TUTORIAL

As promised, I have the tutorial for the cupcake decorations I made. If anyone has any further questions about what I did or used, please ask me and I will be happy to help you. But I think you will find that these are super easy. Please note that I made the mini sized ones, you could easily do this with regular size cupcake cups and regular size ornament balls.

ITEMS NEEDED:

• Hot Glue Gun
• Candy (Mini Cupcake) Cups
• Mini Ornament Balls
• Gel Medium - Extra Heavy Gel (semi-gloss)
• Enamel Acrylic Paint (whatever color you want your frosting to be)
• Beads (if sprinkles are desired)
• Glitter (if desired)
• Holly Floral Stem
  

STEP 1
Hot glue your ball into the cup. I put glue on the bottom and sides of the ball, all the way around. The sides of the cup will expand and not look right if you don't use enough glue on the sides. (Learned that after about 6 balls)





STEP 2
You are ready to mix your frosting. I scooped out the gel medium into two zip lock bags. I squirted the paint into the bags to make a vanilla and chocolate frosting. I mixed the paint into the gel by squishing the bag until it was thoroughly mixed. Get the Enamel acrylic paint so that when it dries it will be nice and glossy.



The gel medium was the most expensive item purchased. I got this little tub on clearance and with a 20% off coupon and it still came to $9.00. And as you can see I used almost all of it to make 20 mini ornaments.



STEP 3
After I had the icing mixed in the baggies, I snipped off a small corner of the bag to squeeze the icing out of. When applying the frosting, you need to make sure you cover the whole top of the ornament, except the hook. Make sure none of the gold or silver top of the ball is visible. I squeezed the frosting out and then used a kitchen knife to spread the icing on the ball, just like you would with real icing.


STEP 4
Now you need to add your toppings. You will need to cut your cherries off the floral stem and have them ready before you start frosting your "cupcakes".


I also had my beads on a plate for me to easily grab and sprinkle on after the frosting was applied.



You can add glitter if you want. Just sprinkle it on over the wet frosting.


Replace back in the little ornament holder that they came in to dry. These will take a full day to dry completely, depending on how thick you frost them.


That's it! It really is that easy. I got all my supplies from Michael's (a craft store) and they came to around $30 including some items on sale and clearance, and with a 20% off entire order coupon. I made 20 mini balls and still have lots of my supplies left, with the gel medium (and ornament balls obviously) being the exception.

One last thing, if making the mini cupcakes. Make sure you check the size of ball to see it will fit and look nicely in the candy cup. I have some across two sizes on the mini ornament balls.

There are a ton of different ways to make and customize your own little cupcake ornaments. I would love to see pics of anyone's cupcakes that does this. I would love to post them up, so please send pics to my email address, getchanailsdid@yahoo.com.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN

I got so much positive feedback on the two frankens I posted about this week - Black Top and Fire Starter, that I thought I would show you what I used to make them.


FIRE STARTER:



To make Fire Starter I used clear nail polish and three colors of glitters.


The colors used: Copper, Gold & dark Magenta.
The glitter used for this came from Michael's Craft store. Since I wasn't counting on showing you all how to make this I don't have an accurate amount of how much of each glitter I used. I just dumped some, about the same amount of each color, into a empty bottle, then added clear nail polish and bb's and shook it all up.


BLACK TOP:



To make Black Top I used two glitters, clear nail polish and black nail polish.


Both of these glitters are Martha Stewart brand and can probably be found at any local craft store. The main color I used for this franken was Onyx, I added that to an empty bottle, then added some clear and just a touch of black nail polish. I used just enough black to tint the clear polish. Then for a little extra twinkle I added a small amount of the hematite glitter, two bb's and shook shook shook. Remember this is supposed to look rough, so don't put any top coat on this one!

KONAD TUTORIAL - PART 2

Part 2 will be focused on using the Konad on longer nails. As I mentioned before, I using my mom's hands and nails in the pics to follow.


Several of you had concerns on how to make the full nail plate designs work for longer nails. I will be showing you two options that I know of.



1. HOW TO MAKE A FULL PLATE STAMP WORK ON LONG NAILS:

OPTION 1 - THE FRENCH TIP
Stamp/Paint a french tip on the end of the nail starting where the full plate design ends. I have seen The Nailphile do this many times, and if you have seen her nails, you know they are LONG! Several of her finished konads done in this style can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE, just to show you a few.


Any un-stamped on the french tip can be filled in using the nail polish brush.





OPTION 2 - THE DOUBLE STAMP
Another way, is to do a double stamp on the nail. The double stamp method works great for stamps that don't have definite lines. Trying to get lines to line up would be impossible. The trick for doing the double stamp is to try and get the designs stamped as close as possible without over stamping on the first stamp too much. A little won't be so noticeable, so just try and stamp as close as possible.


One stamp.

Double stamped.

If I didn't tell you that was double stamped, I really don't think most of you would have known. Again, I reference The Nailphile, she has a ton of double stamped images on her blog. You can see a few of them by clicking HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.


Again, the best way to tell if a double stamp will work is to TRY IT!!





2. HOW TO LINE UP THE FRENCH TIP PLATES ON YOUR NAIL
When I was practicing this the other day, I never realized just how hard it is to line up the french tip plates! No matter how many times I tried, the tip would be off center. Thanks to Colette of My Simple Pleasure's who remembered a post that was done by Steph at Nail Juice. She has the most clever way of lining her french tip's up. You can find Steph's post HERE, where she has pictures of this procedure.

Basically what you do is after you get your stamp ready (you have your paint on it and it is ready to go) you turn your hand over so that your palm is facing up, and you place your nail in the right spot on top of the stamp. Basically instead of stamping your nail, you are placing your nail on the stamp. I tried this out on my mom, and it worked great!! Steph you are a genius!! Here are the results of my mom's french tip designs:

You can really tell with this stamp, since it has a definite center point to it, that Steph's trick really works!

3. SET ASIDE SOME TIME
One of the most important steps to trying out Konad, especially for beginners, is to set aside some time. You need time to basically "play" with your konad set. This gives you time to find out what brand of polish works best with konad, or what polish works best for the plate design you choose, what colors work good together, etc. All of these things are necessary for getting good results with your konad, and soon it won't take you but a few extra minutes to whip out a great Koni!

Well that's all I have for you! Please, if there is anything I didn't cover, feel free to ask me in the comments section or send me an email to getchanailsdid.blogspot.com.