On this special publication date of A Snowfall of Silver, I'm thrilled to host a guest post from Demet. She shares some insights about the process of creating her amazing nail art, but you'll have to head over to her Instagram Books_polished to see the finished result! Thanks so much, Demet.
Hello everyone!
My name is Demet and I am the human behind the Instagram account
Books_Polished, where I post nail art inspired by book cover.
If you have been here for a while, you might have heard of me before.
Two years ago for the publication of Laura Woods A Sky Painted Gold, Amy
graciously allowed me to write a guest posts for her blog showing the behind
the scenes of my nail design.
With the publication of the sequel A Snowfall of Silver happening this week we
have been talking about repeating the experience.
So here I am! Showing you even more nails 😊
Before I start anything, I usually spent a good amount of time prepping my nails. This includes taking off any old polish from my last design, pushing back
cuticles, cutting hang nails and filing down my nails. Due to the fact that I am currently living a much calmer life than usual
(thanks Corona??), my nails have been getting quite long. And I have learned over years that there is a point where my nails will just
break if they are getting too long, so I rather file them regularly to try and
avoid that 😉
A big part of starting a new design is finding a good base colour. Blue is one of my favourite colours which is why I own a few too many blue
polishes that are all slightly different. Finding a colour for this manicure was also a bit more complicated, because I
sadly wasn’t able to receive a review copy, which means I did not have a chance
to see the actual book in person, but had to rely on pictures I could find
online… For this step I like to take out all polishes I think could work and paint a
small square on a silicone baking mat. That way I can see how the colour changes when it dries and it also allows me
to judge it’s opacity.
As a nail artist I don’t actually own that many nail polishes, compared to
other people.
And I especially don’t buy many new ones these days. Many of the polishes in the second picture are up to 7 years old. One is
already 11.
Having a good nail polish thinner at hand is a must to keep your polishes
working. Whenever I come across a polish that does not have a good consistency anymore,
I drop a few drops in them to revive them again. A bottle like this costs about 6 GBP and lasts me about a year and has saved me
much more money over the years.
(Side note: this is not an ad, but simply the bottle I currently own, because
it was cheap and had good reviews online. You can easily use other brands, but
do not use nail polish remover! As it will slowly destroy your polish rather
than revive it.)
These are the polishes I ended up choosing:
p2 Color Victim: 191 gigantic
Barry M: Liquid Chrome – Rain on me
Seche Vite: Fast drying top coat
Not pictures: essence: extreme last base coat
(Again, not an ad, just what I own.)
First up:
2 layers of the blue to get to full opacity
+
1 layer fast drying top coat
The top coat helps smooth everything out, makes sure the base is completely dry
before I paint over it and gives it an extra layer of protection, in case I
don’t like what I paint on top it and have to remove it.
As much as a plan and try to be logic up to this step. When it comes to actually painting a design, I more or less wing it? I try to pick an element that seems the least amount intimidating and start
there. In this case it was the head of the girl.
And then I go from there an roughly sketch in the other elements. I knew already I would be going back and forth with the details, so this step
was more about getting the different lements where there were supposed to be.
Spoiler: I did not quite manage that. I realized that the head of the girl was too big in comparison to her body and
especially to the boy's head, which on the cover of the book is much bigger than
the girl's head.
So I do what I always do. I dig out the 100% acetone and my brush and remove what I think doesn’t match.
In this case that means I took away her head, but I also went in and slimmed
down some of the lines, for example on his head. With different polishes I might have just gone in with the blue again to cover
the silver where I didn’t like it, but the blue was a bit too sheer and I
didn’t want the layers to get too thin. So going in with acetone and different size brushes was the better plan of
action.
But you have to be very careful in those cases, as you only want to take off
the top silver layer and not destroy the blue layers below. As you can see in this picture if you look at the top left corner, I did not
quite manage that all the time. But I just went back in with a bit of the blue to cover it up. And the top coat I use is very good in evening out layers like this, so the end
result still looks smooth.
You can also tell in this picture that I went back in at the dress as well and
took away some of the excess silver, as well as adding a bit more of the blue
to make the lines more refined.
Added a new head! Looking back I am still not quite happy with it, but there is a finite number
of times I can go in with acetone to take parts off. So if I didn’t want to start completely new, I had to make it work. So I just hope it’s one of those things that’s only annoying to me, because I
have been staring at the cover design for too long.
On to other nails! There are after all 5 of them and we have so far only covered one. To be fair the design on this nail and the ring finger took me probably about
5-10min, after I had spent about an hour just on the middle finger. This is in part because I decided to not stick to the design too strictly and
just imitate the idea of it.
I even took a few creatively liberties by simplifying the small round baubles
that are all over the over and just transforming them into dots. But I just thought that trying to imitate the more intricate design on the
scale I am working would be a lost cause. (At least while painting with nail polish! I know a few nail artists that paint
with acrylic paint and therefore adhere to entirely different rules.)
Went back to the middle finger and added a part of the umbrella, because I felt
like the top was too empty and then I ran into a creative block trying to
decide what to do with the empty two fingers.
Whenever I don’t know how to proceed, I kill some time by cleaning up. I remove any nail polish that got on my skin and add top coat to any nails that
are completely finished. I also add some cuticle oil around any finished nails, as acetone is very
drying to your skin.
(Note: ONLY add it to nails when you are done with them. The oil layer between
nail polish layers would make then peel very fast and unsatisfactory)
Another thing I like to do these days, when I don’t know how to proceed is ask
the internet.
Sometimes I listen to what the internet tells me and sometimes I make up my
mind and do whatever I want. 😉
As I was holding back all behind the scenes pictures for this blog post, I had
to be rather vague, but the answer was still very helpful!
To see the end result, check out my Instagram: Books_polished
And if you have any questions about books or nail art, I am always more than
happy to chat 😊
