Hi guys, so this post is a little different to usual. Due to having exams at the moment I haven't really had much time for Nail Art so I wrote this in preparation for the worst, which has sadly come. So basically, in case you hadn't realised by the name of my blog, i'm a bit of a newbie to Nail Art, so to try and get a bit of base knowledge I thought I would see what books on Nail Art my library had, although I actually had to order some to be delivered to my library in the end, but as they're all free to borrow and order to the store anyway I was happy to do this.
So, here is the 3 books that I ended up getting:
From left to right they are Heinemann Level 2 Nails, Thompson Nail Artistry and finally Nail Art Sourcebook.
There was no particular reason for me picking these 3 other than they were the first 3 books when I searched for Nails. Overall I really like these books, especially the Nail Art Sourcebook, as you can see there is a few sticky notes sticking out of the side where i've found designs I want to try or want to try and adapt for my short nails.
So the first book; Level 2 Nails from the publisher Heinemann, it has no retail price on it, but I found it on Amazon for just over £20, it has 281 pages. I'm not sure why I picked this up really, its definitely aimed at someone who does a college course in Nails and so instead of showing you how to do Nails it goes more into the background of setting up a Nail Studio and the Health and Safety behind it as well as how to deal with clients and things. Which, as I only ever see this being a hobby is not really that helpful for me. So, to tell you the truth I skipped past through most of this book. One page I did find interesting though was a page on fingernail shapes, according to the book there are 5 different shapes that you can make your Nail; Square, Round, Oval, Pointed and Squoval. Later on though it shows you how to do some really cool designs, for instance a 3 colour glitter effect in a stained glass effect. But overall, for someone like me, this book was basically useless, especially for the hefty price tag, unless if like me you can borrow it for free from a library, I wouldn't recommend it unless if you were actually doing a Nail course or thinking of becoming a professional Nail Technician and opening your own Nail Studio.
The second book; Nail Artistry from the publisher Thompson, it has a RRP of just over £30, it has 277 pages. The first thing I noticed was this book is sponsored by Creative polishes, any time it mentions a product it always has to mention the Creative product, there is also at least 1 picture of Creative products per each 2 pages, which is a little crazy. To start with this book is a bit like the previous one and covers things that you would need to set up a Nail Studio. However, this only takes up the first 74 pages. After this there are sections on; Basic Nail Art techniques, The art of airbrushing, Mixed media Nail Art, Fashion and Photographic nails and finally a section on competition Nail Art. Quite obviously the Basic Nail Art Techniques was the section that interested me most and I wasn't disappointed, as well as going through all the different tools and products that can be used, it also had quite a few pages of step by step nail art and although many of these were not very original ideas, there was a few that I loved and really want to try out, but i'm just not sure i'll be able to get the same effect without having the right brushes and things. The airbrushing section didn't interest me at all, simply because i'm not going to get an airbrush and so have no use for any of the tutorials or instructions on how to use an airbrush. The competition nail art section didn't really interest me either apart from the pictures in it, which were really cool. I would love to include some pictures from this book, but sadly like all books it is copyrighted.
The final book; Nail Art Sourcebook from the publisher Carlton Books limited, it has a RRP of just under £15, so is by far the cheapest, it has 255 pages however it is worth noting that it is a lot smaller than the other two books as you can see from the picture above. This book was great, exactly what it says on the tin; 'over 500 designs for fingertip fashions', however it is just that designs for Nails and although these are presented very nicely (either a single artificial nail or 5 nails on a hand), it doesn't actually explain how to do each Nail, so is essentially just an inspiration book, a few of the pictures are very similar to each other which is a bit disappointing, but as there's so many you're not really missing out! There's quite a few I want to try, but far too many that are too complicated for me to even look at twice with my current abilities in Nail Art.
So, that's it! I'm very sorry that I haven't had time to do anything that interesting and that due to copyright I can't actually show you any of the inside of the book, but hopefully this is better than having no post!
