Have you ever thought about using nail polish on your paper crafts? Perhaps some nail polish on your cards or scrapbook pages, maybe even your bullet journal? I did six tests with different kinds of nail polish to see if they would work as embellishments on cards.
To start, I pre cut die cuts of sentiments and shapes. Then depending on the effect, I heat embossed several layers of either clear embossing powder or black embossing powder. Then I would apply my nail polish over the top. On the last test, my nail polish was opaque and glittery enough to go direct-to-paper.
Supplies used:
- different bottles of nail polish
- Thicker cardstock
- Clear Embossing Powder
- Black Embossing Powder
- heat gun
- Sparkle Die set
- Balloon Die set
- Love Die set
- Loose glitter
1. Confetti Nail Polish
The first test I tried was with clear nail polish that had floating confetti bits in it. I heat embossed in clear embossing powder then painted the confetti nail polish over. It worked pretty well. However, with confetti nail polish, you have to play around with it a little bit to get the confetti bits exactly where you want them.
2. Loose Glitter Over Clear Nail Polish
After heat embossing over my die cut, I added some clear nail polish to act as my glue so I could sprinkle loose chunky glitter over the top. The loose glitter stuck on ok, but It also kept falling off and it was hard to control where the loose glitter went. Then, I tried sealing the glitter bits with a layer of top coat. I just ended up getting loose glitter on my brush. This might work if I had more patience during drying time or perhaps some different glitter, but for right now, this didn’t work for me.
3. Iridescent flakie nail polish
I heat embossed my die cut in black heat embossing powder because the nail polish looks best over black nail polish. The results were surprising. It actually turned out quite fantastic. You could see the color shifts in the flakies in different lighting.
4. Regular nail polish
I was hoping for some cool color shifting on my die cut as I get on my mails but the effect just wasn’t there. The nail polish did not level out on the paper as it does on your nails. I ended up with a very streaky effect. This test was not my favorite. It may work differently with other nail polish.
5. Holographic glitter nail polish
This holographic nail polish in my stash is super opaque, and I thought the glittery holographic effect would mask any streakiness. I had to apply 4 layers but in the end, I got a beautiful holographic effect. I mean the shininess on this was just absolutely fantastic, especially in direct lighting.
6. Glitter nail polish
I then tried another opaque glitter nail polish, without heat embossing. The nail polish was so opaque that it didn’t need that level of heat embossing. This brand of nail polish was perfect right to paper.
You can see the process below as well as the supplies I used. If you try this technique out, try it with different nail polish, and definitely do a test on scratch paper first.
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