Jin Jin's Adventures

Sometime back, I bought these tools and said that I'll show you how to use them after some practise. Well, I didn't get around to trying them out until today. So that is my first attempt and it's not perfect, but thought I'll just share with you this new technique I've just picked up.


The acrylic colours used are neon blue, neon orange, neon pink, black and clear acrylic powder.


First prep your nails by filing the top surface of your nails. Push back your cuticles and remove excess oils from your nail surface. Apply 2 coats of the Protein Bond.


I'm using the reverse application method to create french acrylic nails. I've seen it being done before and it helps to create a beautiful smile line. However, this is my first attempt so it looks a bit messy.

Take a large size ball of acrylic and apply it to the top part of your nails, leaving a 'U' shape at the bottom.


Take your black acrylic and cover the bottom half of your nails. Once that's dry, apply a coat of clear acrylic on top of your black acrylic only.


Dip your impression tool into the clear acrylic powder before stamping to prevent any wet acrylic sticking onto it.


Press the impression tool firmily into the slightly dry clear acrylic.


Wait for your clear acrylic to dry, then using the neon acrylic powder, apply randomly over the stamped out shapes. To ensure that the neon colour acrylic goes into the cavity, I also use my fingers to press the colour in.

Wait for the neon colours to dry, then file off the top layer from the entire nail. You can see my index finger in the background. It's already had the excess filed away, clearly showing the remaining neon colours in the stamped out shapes.


Remove all the dust from your nails, then seal it with a gel top coat and cure under the UV lamp.


It looks a bit uneven :( But I'm happy with it being my first attempt.



The only problem I had was that some bubbles kept appearing under the clear acrylic overlay. Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening?

I've finally got myself a couple of bottles of OPI Suede to try. When matte nail polish just came out, I stayed away from them because I prefer a glossy finish. However, I figuered I could probably take the suede finish.



The novelty of this suede finish lasted 1 day. By day 2 I had to add some gold glitter and top coat to glam it up. hehehe Guess I'm still a glossy and bling girl after all!





I'm using my favourite gold glitter polish from Butter London. It's dense and intense, just the way I like my glitter polish!

Now to my exciting new hauls! I recently purchased a new nail drill. It's soooo much easier to remove product from my nails now. I feel like I was living in ice-age before haha having to manually file products off is hard work!





I also got 2 nail bits. The larger one is for removing products and the smaller one is for preparing the nail bed for gel and acrylic application. It's also extremely good at removing cuticles!

I also got this very cool gel kit. It comes in a pretty carry box.



This gel kit contains a few basic gel colours - Green, Yellow, Brown, Red, Blue, Black, Purple, Orange and White. It also comes with a jar of frosted pigment and powder crystal.



It also include1 bottle of Protein Bond, a tile (to mix your gel colours on) and a tool to mix your gels with.



Under the lid, there's also a removable colour wheel that teaches you how to mix different colours together to get other colours. There are endless possibilities as you can also add the frosted pigments or crystal to create a more shimmery effect. I only discovered after I've taken these pictures that behind this colour wheel, there's another wheel that gives you ideas about which contrasting colours will match each other.


Using just the blue gel, I did my toes and added blue glitters and small round glitters. I've already had this on for 1 week and it's still as good as new!

I've just completed this set of nails for my sister-in-law who was attending a dress up party. She wore a cute Kimono that had a black and white coloured Obi (Sash). I did this for her to match the Obi.

Thanks to Cyan from Blue Tape and Nails who gave me the idea to use painter's tape for creating this nail art.



When I first saw this being used for nail art, I had a 'why didn't I think of that' moment. It's a really great way to cover up parts of your nail especially when you're painting different colours onto your nails. I bought this painter's tape for delicate surfaces. As you can see it's got a low-medium adhesion so it should not rip off your nail polish.



 Cover up half of your nails using the painter's tape and then paint 2 coats of white.


Once the nail polish if dry, remove the tape and you can see a nice clean line.



Using a darker colour (I used OPI - Baby It's "Coal" Outside), paint 2 coats on the other half of the nail.

 Using black acrylic, mould a rectangle strip diagonally across the nail.


Using silver rhinestones, glue 2 rows just below the black acrylic strip. For the second line, I alternate between a large and a medium size stone. I used the magical tray and pick to create this entire set of nails as it requires a lot of rhinestones. See my post from December last year where I featured the Magical Tray 'Magical New Haul'. The combination of them both cuts the time spent by half!


Cover your 3D acrylic strip with a gel top coat and cure under the UV lamp.



You'll need a piece of aluminium foil, black acrylic powder, monomer, acrylic brush and a small pair of scissors.


Pick up a large blop of acrylic and mould it into a flat rectangle shape onto the aluminium foil.


I'm using a slow drying acrylic powder so that you can have more time to mould the acrylic before it hardens. Once the acrylic rectangle is hard enough to be lifted from the foil, slowly lift it using a pincer. Using a pair of scissors, trim off the 4 sides of the rectangle so that you get a straight line.



Using the pincer again, pinch the acrylic rectangle in the middle to form a bow.

Create a smaller strip of acrylic rectangle and trim off the sides. Wrap this acrylic strip around the middle section of the bow while it's still soft. I used a combination of acrylic and glue to attach the bow onto the nails. cover bow with gel top coat and cure for 90 seconds.


This is the completed bow attached onto the nail tip.


 These are the design for the rest of the nails.





It looks quite complicated creating this bow, but it was quite easy once you start making it. This is the first time I'm creating the 3D acrylic bow using this method. Please let me know if you've got any questions.