Choosing acrylic paint for nail art

Acrylic paint for nail art

For most of the time I've been doing nail art, I didn't use acrylic paint at all.. I used nail polish to paint all my designs, and even though that's a lot harder to work with, I didn't mind - I enjoyed the challenge.

Unfortunately, by using just nail polish for your designs, you're missing out on a lot of possibilities such as potraits and one stroke.. Not saying that it's completely impossible to do a portrait with nail polish, but it's likely that it'll end up being a thick, messy looking blob. Besides, nail polish dries out a lot faster on a palette, so it would be a waste having to fill it with drops of fresh polish every few minutes.

In 2013 (been doing nail art since 2009), I decided on making a few portraits on nails and surrendered to using acrylic paint. These designs can be found as step by step videos on my old nail art channel on YouTube; 3TanjaJ3. I made Michael Jackson, Ellen, Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands (yes, I like Johnny Depp, haha) and Taliajoy18. And must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed painting them!

Choose good paints

There are many advantages to using acrylic paint; it's cheap,. you can mix any color or shade you need, as long as you have the primary colors and your black and white,. you don't have to worry about it drying out on your palette before you're done - just add a touch of water, if they start to thicken,. and did I mention they're cheap?

With that being said, I wouldn't necessarily advice anyone to go out and buy the cheapest set of paints they can find. They might be just fine! but there's a risk they're not that good at all.

I've had a couple of bad experiences with acrylic paint; one being a set I purchased at a local supermarket. It came with 48 colors, I believe, and they would literally crack underneeth the top coat - even though they were completely dry!.. The others were some I recently bought off ebay; the "oumaxi" paints that can be purchased through many sellers. Please don't waste your money on these, the quality is simply horrible! They work OK for simple designs, but if you try to thin them with water you'll be able to see just how bad the pigmentation is. There was barely any payoff on the tests I made.

What I expect from acrylic paint is;

- To have a smooth consistency that's not too thick. You can always add extra water, but it doesn't hurt for them to be 'ready to use' right from the tube or bottle, does it?

- To have good pigmentation! 

My all time favorite brand of acrylic paint is 'Jo Sonja's' But they're fairly hard for me to get my hands on. I don't mind ordering online, but I haven't found many EU websites which have them in stock, and which at the same time offer a fair price for the shipping.

Besides, they're around 3, 4 and even up to around 5£ each. I love them, and I use them for painting faces on my miniature dolls - but I wanted something a bit more inexpensive for using in nail art.

I looked around online and looked at a couple of different brands of paint. I decided to try out "Folk art" and found the UK based website 'craft cellar' - which I'll most definitely be ordering from again! I placed the order late Sunday, and the package arrived (at my door, in Denmark) with a carrier Wednesday morning.

I ordered 26 different colors, which reminds me of another thing I was happy about - one of the colors I'd ordered was out of stock, so they sent me a different but similar one as a replacement. Of course that can be considered both good and bad service. Personally, as this was the first time ordering these paints, I was happy that I didn't  have to be without the dark blue color. But had this been the second or third time ordering, maybe I already had the color they sent as a replacement, which in that case I would've been less excited.

Anyway, I made a few tests on paper, and filmed a video as well - which will be up on my YouTube channel; SCSnails, in a few days. I also used them to make the rose on the nail you can see in the picture above.

They were 1.39£ a piece, and even though the shipping was 22£ the average price for each paint still ended up being around half the price or less, than the Jo Sonja's.

I really like them. The consistency is good, it's not too thick and not too runny. A few of them seem to be a bit thicker than the rest, which can be due to how old the bottles are, the way they've been stored, the colors etc. but in general they're quite nice. The pigmentation is good too, and they're easy and smooth to work with. Can't wait to use them for some nail designs!