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Jennifer is known on social media as theNailNana. She is a licensed manicurist and instructor, 30 year veteran nail artist master, award-winning nail competitor, mentor, and educator. She loves learning and sharing with others. Jennifer draws her inspiration from everywhere; nature, textures, fashion trends, and jewelry. Unrelated artisan skills such as glass blowing, ceramics, and stained glass have also been known to influence her design. While still chasing that perfect elongated nail bed and white tip in an exotic shape that makes people look thrice, she finds the freedom of each nail being a different palette in complementary design so much fun, challenging, and inspirational. “Nail art is my refuge, my pain control, and my life’s work. I truly have never ‘worked’ since becoming a nail artist 30 years ago, even with a full book!”
Week 1: CND
Runway to NTNA
My inspiration for this challenge was the nail with the flower and the curly wire with colored beads. I saw vivid texture, pop art, hippie freedom, with a touch of late Renaissance surrealism in the other nails in the picture. I love to work with the natural characteristics of the things I use for nail art: the curl of holographic thread off the spool, the natural stickiness of the Shellac line of CND gel-polish and the Express 5 Top Coat. I had to use just a smidge of foil — one of the original nail art trends from the ’80s that most everybody has in their stash of nail art. The new UV gel technology makes it so much fun to use and so much faster than air dry foil adhesive, making this a great medium for runway duplication on a larger scale. I used matte and shiny foils, Shellac Matte Top Coat, and Express 5 Top Coat for contrasting texture while keeping the art flat. My floral painting technique was Shellac color application with a liner brush on uncured Shellac top coat to make my little dreamy, psychedelic flowers for the peace sign nails and the thumbs’ underside. I used the skull silhouette from my inspiration picture on the thumbs and painted the underside with a bouquet of flowers with Shellac. I also used an ombre brush to make lines and texture on three of the nails with Shellac. I used holographic thread for loops (rainbows) and dried flowers for hand adornments (think “flowerchild”) applied with eyelash adhesive. I used a water-based glue stick to attach holographic foil to the fingers. Looking a little messy and chaotic, yet uniform in color story and theme, I call my entry “Peace, Love and Shellac.”
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