japanese nail art

Japanese Nail Art is the most inspiring, exciting nail art you can find. The nail art scene in Japan is massive with magazines, accesories and entire expos devoted to blinged out nails. It's slowly making it's way to other countries, but thanks to online shopping you can have this look on your fingertips very easily!

japanese nail art magazines

There is so many Japanese nail art magazines and they are so inspiring! The challenge is, unless you're actually fromJapan, they can be hard to get your hands on. If you're looking to buy magazines, they best website I found is Nelpara, who sells Nail Up!, Stylish Nail, Nail Venus and Nail Max. The prices are all in yen but to give you an idea; one issue of Nail Up! was priced at 476 yen, which equals to about $6.00 USD. Not bad, but I'm not sure how much they charge for delivery.

You can also try myjpop.com to buy nail magazines, but they didn't seem to have as many for sale. If you want a subscription tryTokyo Samurai, but be prepared to spend well over $100 for a year of magazines. The best, and cheapest, way I've found is by googling for scans. There's a livejournal group called J Magazine Scans that has loads of free, downloadable nail art scans in .zip files. Get ready to get inspired!

3d nail art

If you want a 3d japanese nail art effect on your nails there is two basic ways you can go about it. You can purchase little 3d decorations made of plastic or fimo that you glue onto your nail or you can use 3d acrylic and paint the design straight onto your nail. If you're a beginner, I would suggest starting out with gluing on pre-made bits and bobs, you can find loads on ebay or at your local craft store. To find them on ebay I find the search terms "3d nail", "3d acrylic" and "Nail deco" give good results.

You can find the acrylic powders on ebay and amazon for varying prices. There's lots of tutorials online about how to do 3d acrylic nail art, but my mother (an ex nail tech) has warned me that working with acrylic is a lot harder than it looks! I finally got my paws on some 3d acrylic powder and can say that my mother is right. It's tricky, but not impossible. Practice a lot! You can make the 3d shapes on tape or plastic, then pop them off when they're dry and apply to your nail. This girl makes these 3d acrylic roses look like childs play!

here to buy?

If buying and gluing and painting all this stuff on your nails just sounds like too much work...fear not! There are many talented people out there who do japanese nail art all for you and would be thrilled if you bought their nails! My two favorite Etsy sellers areBling Up and Dollish Polish. Well, my shopon Etsy has some nice stuff too! ;) Shameless self promotion, I know. Another site with a huge selection of amazing nails is Yukiumi. They also sell individual bits if you want to DIY, but beware because they tend to charge a LOT.

get to the salon!

Just a quick disclaimer to say that I have not been to any of these salons so please don't be mad at me if they suck. Just email me and I'll take them off the list. Also, if you know of a great salon that does 3d japanese art, let me know and I'll add them here.