Steel Ball Nail Art

Born Pretty nail art store continues to enable me to try new things on my nails. This time they sent a set of steel ball decorations. They came in a set of twelve colors in screw top containers. I believe the colors can vary from set to set; I got a nice mix of greens, purples, blues, bright pinks, and a dusty yellow.





My first thought when I saw these was "sprinkles!". I considered trying a cupcake mani (see a version from Rins here) but wasn't feeling that confident about my freehand abilities so instead did a geometric accent nail on my Owl's Lust/Pitch Black Glimmer mani using two colors of balls.



To do this, I taped off a triangle on my nail, laid down a coat of Gelous in the open area, then picked up balls with the flat side of an orange stick and patted them into the wet polish. Then I moved the tape to do a second triangle opposit the first. The last two I didn't use tape for but just put the balls in the open areas. I pushed the balls around with the pointy end of the orange stick to try and get them where I wanted them, then covered the whole design with a thick layer of Gelous. Next time I'm going to try a different top coat, as the Gelous took some of the color off the balls, most noticeably the blue grey ones.





These balls are available on Born Pretty's site here. They cost $5.41 for one set; quantity discounts are available if you buy more than one at a time. They also have a wheel with 12 colors of steel balls for $3.33 (look in the Glitter/Fimo/Slice/Sticker section of Nail Art Decoration). Use code KARENDK31 for 10% off.

The steel balls used for this entry were provided to me for free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the products for my own use.