Birds of a Feather

Hello there nail art fanatics. How have you been? Did you have a good Thanksgiving? Eat lots of food? Good, good. Well, let’s not beat around the bush, let’s get to this week’s manicure – FEATHERS!

I know, it sounds a bit odd. I saw this kit in the mall the other day (long story) and decided to give it a go.

Having used the kit, I can confidently say that all you really need are feathers. I’d recommend heading to your nearest craft store and picking up some colorful feathers that you think would look nice on some fingertips. 🙂 Stick with feathers that have some sort of contrasting color design (dots, stripes, alternating colors, etc.) for the best effect.

It looks a bit crazy, but it’s actually a very simple technique. First, clean up and shape your nails. Mine are looking a little sickly again, so try to ignore those little bumps in my mani ok? Moving on…

Paint your nails as you would normally; a base coat and two top coats of your choice of color. The kit included a very pretty pale shimmery pink, but I think any color would look good, including neutrals. If you want the feather to really POP, use a dark polish for a light colored feather, and vice versa. How easy is that? RIDICULOUSLY SO.

Ahem. After your nails are completely dry (I say that a lot, don’t I?) it’s time to apply the feathers! Are you excited? I’m excited. Let’s do this.

Apply a thin coat of a fast drying top coat. I used the one provided in the kit, but any fast drying topcoat will do. As soon as you apply a coat, take the feather and place the tip onto the top of the nail. Be sure to leave a gap near the cuticle so that your polish can be seen. Press it down firmly so that it all sticks down. This step is important! I was afraid of messing up my coat of color polish and lightly pressed. The result? The ends of the feather stuck up and drove me batshit crazy. Don’t let your nails drive you batshit crazy; press that feather down!

Now you’ll have a super stylish feather sticking off the end of your finger. Not very practical. So, take some very sharp scissors (the smaller the better imo) and snip off the excess feather bit, leaving only the part on your nail behind. Don’t worry about a little bit hanging off, we’ll take care of that next.

Now that all the excess feather bits are taken care of, it’s time to file off the tips. Take a course grit file and file in a downward motion across the top edge of the nail. In other words, you’re using the file to trim off the rest of the feather that’s hanging over the edge of the nail. It make take a few strong strokes of the file to get the hangover feather, but don’t worry, the feather can take it. (You can use a finer nail file, but I think it would be harder.)

Now you have a nicely shaped feather stuck on your nail. Here’s the last step, and to me, the most challenging. Apply a layer of topcoat on top of the feather, but brush it towards the cuticle. It feels weird and I didn’t like it, but it had to be done. By doing this, you’re helping to seal in the feather/tip and you’re following the feather’s natural grain. You don’t want to ….ruffle your feathers do you? Eh? Eh? …Sorry, I’ll see myself out.

So here’s the final result. Aside from my sickly nails, I think it came out rather nicely. I liked that it was a super quick mani, that looks like it took a lot more time than it actually did. I’m eager to try different (ahem, better) feather/nail color combos than the kit came with. Don’t get me wrong, the feathers and the polish are beautiful, but together? Eh, uninspired.

Difficulty? 5/10 This mani was really simple, it just needs a few more supplies than a normal mani. After the watercolor mani however, I don’t think this one is particularly challenging! Hell, go grab a feather out of one of your pillows for practice!

Final Thoughts? Easy, quick, and trendy. The perfect mani to wear walking down Fifth Avenue. Feathers add a really interesting texture to the nails and texture seems to be very trendy in the nail art world at the moment. The only real negative I really had with this manicure is, well, funnily enough, the texture. Since I didn’t really push that feather down into the topcoat, the ends stuck up and caught on EVERYTHING. Washing my hair became a very painful experience. After wearing the mani for a week however, the ends have softened and I don’t find myself catching on everything I touch. Despite this, the mani has really held up well; the accent nails outlasting the plain ones by far. The feathers protect the underlying polish and you don’t notice tip wear as much either. Crazy, huh?