Foil's Gold: Black and Gold Foil Skittles - LNTC

Hey y'all!

This week the Llama Nail Techniques Challenge has prompted us to do foils.  I am aware that this caused a lot of stress amongst those of us who are completing the challenge.  Personally I wasn't worried so much about working with the foils, but more about creating a dynamic look.  I played with creating designs using my striping brush for my birthday, but when the time came to actually do my challenge look, I felt a BIT overwhelmed, cuz...

I just had too much selection in front of me!  Thankfully I've got a couple of nail buddies with whom I can talk things out, and one of them pointed me in the right direction, so I present to you a black and gold skittles look.

I picked out four of the designs that had gold and black running through them, and pulled out my black and gold base colors, and got to work.

Maybelline Onyx Black, Barry M Gold Foil, and a selection of nail foils from dollarnailart

I used Onyx Black on my pinky, middle, and thumb, and Gold Foil on my ring and index, and let that dry while I attacked my game plan.

I started with my middle finger, which was created using a microbead mix of mostly black with a few scattered gold.  While that was setting, I cut nail-sized sections of the four foils I'd chosen and then prepped those nails with a thin layer of adhesive glue which came with the foils when I ordered.  Nicely, it didn't take long at all for the glue to turn clear, which indicates that it's tacky and ready for application.

There are a lot of videos on the internet about how to apply foils, so I won't go into a whole lot of detail on this except to say that I used a hard rubber cuticle pusher to apply, and I made sure that I capped my free edges with glue as well so that I could wrap the foils around.  Since these were challenge nails (and therefore didn't need to last any considerable length of time) I opted not to worry with topcoating.

As a last step, I attached the three gold teardrop studs on my 3D nail.  I purchased these along with my foils and I think they're just so pretty.

Not a whole lot to this look, since the foil does most of the work, but I thought you might like some macro shots.  You can tell when they're zoomed in that the foils are definitely not smooth, and there are some big cracks and dents in some areas, but that's almost completely invisible at arm's length.

I do plan on doing some more nail art using foil in the future, applying the glue with detail brushes and only giving hints of the foil rather than whole-nail application, but for now I am very satisfied with this skittle look.  Feel free to sound off below with your thoughts!

As always, enjoy your week and be sure to check out the other foil looks in the inlinkz below!

An InLinkz Link-up