Flair Nails

Okie dokie, so I had never heard of Flair Nails until one of the cosmetology students, Juanita, asked me to do some for her and pulled up some examples off of Pinterest.  As you will see in the photos below, Flair Nails get wider at the tip and to me it looks kind of like small fans coming out of the end of your finger...

Oh - I purposefully didn't put these photos in with my January post because it was long enough already and I wanted to document my steps here so I can look them up in the future without having to wade through a whole bunch of other pictures that don't have anything to do with Flair Nails.  :D

Bless her heart, Juanita was a very patient guinea pig while I figured out how to do them AND I had virtually the entire school hovering around me and watching for most of it.  Including the brand-new teacher and the owner of the school.  Yes, it was a little stressful but I learned a lot that day!  I did not do a very good job on Juanita's nails (sorry girl!) but I feel much better about the set I did today on Gretchen's hand (see the photos after this set).  So here's my photo journey about learning Flair Nails...

First I glued tips to Juanita's fingers and then put my reusable forms under the tips

For the first hand I did I tried adding the acrylic over the tips and fanning it out onto the forms on the sides.  It was rather difficult and did not come out very well...

For the second hand I put acrylic on all the nails and tips like a normal set and then added the form underneath to add the edges

Here's a different angle

After the final filing, they are smooth and ready to polish.  The "Flair" isn't consistent from finger to finger :(

After the polish - Juanita chose a very light pink and green and they didn't show up in the photo very well.

Necessary tools of the trade...

Today I decided to kill two birds with one stone and practice the Pink and White technique AND Flair Nails, whoo hoo!  Using my faithful practice hand, Gretchen, I started with the sculpting forms and used my silver acrylic powder to sculpt the "white" part of the Flair Nail.

Then I filled in the "pink" part with pink #2 acrylic powder 

Remove the forms and behold, Flair!

After filing and a top coat

The thumb, after filing and a top coat.

Time for some bling!  You'll notice that some of the nails received extra filing to keep the Flair angle more consistent in between the Nail Art photos and the "finished with top coat" photos...

Ta Dah!  The only thing I don't like about using the flash was how glittery it made the silver acrylic powder tips look.  In reality, under normal light they just like like a slate grey with a small amount of metallic shine... like the pictures below:

And those, my friends, are Flair Nails!