FingerFood's Guest Posts - Ali from Fixin' to Faff

Hello everyone! Today's guest post is brought to you by Ali from Fixin' to Faff. She is one awesome, funny lady with a flair for great nail designs (check out her chocolate dipped strawberries which is one of my favourites!) This post includes a review as well as nail art! Enjoy! Sam xx

Hey y'all!

I'm so happy to be able to step in and help Sam out, as we're all underwater in the UK right now, but her area is definitely among those severely affected.  I'm Ali from Fixin' To Faff, a native Texan who moved to England last year with my dog.  While waiting to be able to do normal things like drive and get a job, I started writing my blog in part to be able to let my friends and family back home know what I was up to, and in part to show off some of the shinies I was putting on my nails during my faff sessions. 

As regular readers of Finger Food Nails, you know Sam has a great love of color.  I'm continually in awe of her ability to mix colors and styles together to create breathtaking nail art.  As I was thinking about what I would write for y'all, I spied an unopened pack of nail stickers that have been sitting in my supply drawer for a while - Rebel Nails Nail Art Wraps in the Blaze pattern.

These are legitimate nail stickers - they are self-adhesive, paper-backed stickers that stick on and peel off.  They come 16 to a pack which leaves a little room for trial and error, but conveniently also have a clear plastic guide with which you can size your own nails properly to the strips.

Apologies, forgot to snap a pic before I mutilated the packaging!

Application is fairly straight-forward, as it's just a peel and stick product.  Excess is filed off from the free edge of the nail, and you're done!

Here are my finished fingers after a day of wear (including one lot of washing dishes):

Unfortunately I did have a lot of problems with creasing and buckling along the edges of my nails, possibly because of my deep C-curve shape.  Also, I'm not a fan of how the free edge is stark white from the paper backing underneath such a deeply colored pattern, so I applied a bit of Collection Parma Violet to my free edges so it wouldn't be as noticeable (to me, anyway). 

You can see that there was a bit of wear on the tips, as well - but as I said, this was after I'd done dishes.  However, the rough paper edges don't look too hot even immediately after application.

Overall I think these are a fast and easy method to put some color on your tips, but for a perfectionist like me, they weren't what I'd consider a "great" look.  Being ever diligent, I decided to try to recreate the pattern using my own nail art skills.

I think I was able to color match fairly well, though I don't think I accounted for how blue those stickers actually were, so mind have a distinctly violet cast.

I started by recreating the gradient on the stickers using Parma Violet, elf Punk Purple, and NYC Spring Street.  From there I started adding dots mimicking the original pattern, using Nail RocKits Wand Mint Green, OPI Muir Muir On The Wall, and elf Chocolate.

The huge dots were definitely a challenge, because my largest dotting tool only goes so big, so I attempted to make a dotter with the end of a pencil.  However, this didn't turn out so well, and in the end I wound up using the pen nib on the nail art pen to draw in the large green dots.  Everything else was filled in with dotting tools.

I think I got fairly close to the original design!  While this isn't my favorite look of all time, it's pretty exciting to know that you CAN recreate those intricate looks that nail art stickers and wraps have on them.  The only "special" tools required for this were a makeup sponge and some dotting tools (which can be made from household items - no special purchase required), so anyone could recreate it!

What do you think?  Did I capture the feel of the original design?

Thanks so much to Sam for letting me faff around with you guys for a day.  Hope you're all staying warm and dry!

Much love,
Ali