I’ve had a couple of requests for a post about all the equipment I use when I do nail art, so today I’ve put together some photos and I’m going to walk you through it all! Nothing is expensive, you could probably buy everything here for less than £30 altogether, so ideal if you want to get a few things to try out at home.
Firstly, the things I use the most are my brushes. In the post above you can see I have quite a lot of brushes. It’s good to have a collection of different shapes and sizes for different tasks in nail art. The blue brushes I bought from WHSmiths, but haven’t used yet.
Below are my three favourite brushes. The white one I use to clean up my cuticles, dipped in acetone, and came as part of the white set shown above. The two black brushes I bought from a local art shop or only a couple of pound each and these are the two brushes I used for most of my nail art. All my most detailed work is done with that teeny tiny one!
I use this dappen dish below to how acetone in when I am painting my nails or doing nail art. It’s good for cleaning up my cuticles or for cleaning my nail art brush between polish colours.
Next come my dotting tools. These are use a lot in my nail art. Anything that resembles a circle, eg a ladybird spot or a character’s eye, will have been done with these. It’s as simple as dotting the ball end in a little puddle of polish and then dotting it on your nail!
I use toothpicks as a similar tool to my dotting tools, but for when I want a smaller dot than they can provide me. You can get these from most supermarkets for less than £1.
I don’t tend to use these too much anymore, but used to use them a lot. Below are stamping plates, a stamper, and any old store card or credit card to use as a scraper. The stamper I got on Amazon.
Gel pens are another great item for nail art. If you are patient enough for them to dry, they are just as good as nail art pens, at a much lower cost! I find that the metallic ones tend to give a clear colour, but for only a couple of pounds they’re good to add to the collection.
Again I haven’t use these in a while, but hole re-inforcers are great for getting that perfect curve of polish on your nail whether you a painting a half-moon manicure or a french tip! Just paint your base colour, wait for it to dry, stick on your re-inforcer, paint your colour over it, peel of your sticker and wait for it to dry! I got these from WHSmiths for less than £1.
Cosmetic sponges from any beauty shop are very very cheap but work perfectly for making a gradient on your nail. I especially like these wedges which I can use time and time again if I cut them down to the size of my nail each time. The spongy texture helps to blend the two polish colours on your nail and create a perfect gradient!
Next, the glitter!! I have various pots and trays of glitter, glequins and gems. I mostly use those little pots of glequins as the pieces are big enough to use as a statement on your nail but still small enough to not look stupid. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and you can get them almost anywhere! I know Poundland have some gem wheels in there at the moment!
Finally, striping tape. These are great for two things: 1. They are excellent for sticking on, painting over, then peeling off for perfect straight lines, and 2. They’re really pretty colours and some are glittery so they’re cute enough to incorporate into your nail art design.
So I hope this post has been useful to you today. It really is so easy to give yourself a gorgeous and professional manicure at home for a very low cost!
Let me know if you think I’m missing something from my collection, I’d be very interested!
