Fabulous Feathers

Good afternoon!!  So I spent last night after Daniel went to bed fiddling with a bunch of feathers for my latest manicure.  Yes these are REAL ACTUAL FEATHERS!!!  I'm not nearly that good at nail art that I could paint something like this on my nails myself and they are not nail wraps or foils or anything like that.  I saw a feather manicure in a post of a girl I follow on Instagram on my iPhone and was immediately intrigued and excited!!  She graciously told me exactly how to do it so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  It was actually quite simple, just time consuming and a little tedious but I think well worth it!!

The feathers I used were from a package of feather picks I picked up at  Dollarama for $1.50.  It came with five different coloured feather picks and each pick probably has approximately 10 feathers on it all of varying sizes.  There was yellow, orange, red, black and as you can see from the photo above PINK! :)

If you want to try this out yourself or if you are just curious you will need feathers obviously, a nude base coat, tiny mani scissors, a nail file and a top coat.

Start off by picking your feathers and trimming them all to approximately the size of each nail.  Have them all laid out before you start because you have minimal time to place them.  As always, I started out with my China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier as my base.  Once that dried I started with the first nail and put on a coat of a nude base coat.  Mine happened to be the Barielle nude french manicure polish but you can use any nude polish you have.  Heck you could probably even use a coloured polish depending on the colour of your feathers.  You don't want the coat too thin or too thick, you'll figure out just the right thickness of coat as you go along.  If you have too much it seeps between the feather and muddies up the colour of the feathers but if it's too thin the feather won't stick.  Before the nude coat dries, place the desired feather in the desired location on your nail and gently tap it into place paying extra attention to the corners and edges along the cuticles.  Once it seems to be sticking fairly well use your scissors to trim the excess feather off the tip of your nail and any excess that sticks out past your cuticles.  This is the tedious and somewhat annoying part.  Again though, as you go you'll get the hang of it and this part will become a bit quicker and easier, especially when you're using your dominant hand to do the trimming etc.  Once you have the feather trimmed and the nail doesn't seem tacky anymore immediately place a fairly generous top coat over the feather being gentle not to disturb any little bits of feather that may not have entirely adhered yet.  And I say fairly generous coat because the feather will soak up majority of the top coat.  I just used a regular Color Club top coat, I'm not sure that I would recommend a fast dry top coat for this as it may not have a chance to really soak into the feather before it dries and the top coat soaking into the feather is what keeps the feather nice and secure.  Repeat these steps individually for each nail and once you have done all of the nails go back and place another 2 or 3 top coats over all of your nails.  The total number of top coats depends on the top coat you are using.  I did a total of 2 top coats after the initial top coat on each nail.  You'll have to play it by ear and just keep adding top coats until the surface is nice and smooth and shiny because the first few don't stay very smooth or shiny because most of the top coat gets absorbed by the feather.  Once everything is good and dry you may have to take a very fine file and file away at the tips of your nails a bit in case there was any excess feather sticking out as once the top coat is on the tips/ends can get a little rough and scratchy or sharp.  The feathers file down quite nicely once you have all the top coat on and it's all dry.

The results should look somewhat like this:

 And a nice close look:

I love how each nail turns out slightly differently depending on the feather and exactly how you place the feather.  You can do a slight variation of this manicure by leaving more naked nail at the base so not as much of the nail is covered in feather.  You can also play with the angles you place the feathers on the nails at.  Lots to play around with with this mani and although it was a bit time consuming as I mentioned in the beginning it is totally worth it!!

Please leave a comment about what you think and/or if you would like to have your nails done like this or any other mani I've posted.  Again, only $5 for just a polish change (fingers or toes) and only $10 for a full on mani or something like these feather nails.