22k Gold Leaf Manicure

When my friend Edward asked me if I'd like to try gold leafing my nails, I said oh hell yes. Edward is an unusual guy, an artist, artisan, innovator and mentor, a renaissance man with a big heart, an intuitive ear and an adventurous spirit.

He brought over the supplies we'd be using: real gold leaf, brushes, a little dish of clay and glue adhesive mixture made especially for this purpose and a burnisher. Edward is a frame maker and the method he taught me is one that he uses to gold leaf his frames. He had gold leafed a couple of his own nails to show me how it could turn out and showed me the technique on one of my nails, leaving the supplies for me to experiment with. 

The photos show my first gold leaf manicure turned out. You'll notice that the only nail with complete coverage is my pinky -- that's the one Edward did! The red that you see peeking out through the breaks in the leaf is the clay and glue mixture. This creates a distressed look that you often see on gold leaf frames. I would have preferred not to have any breaks in the leaf, but I'm still pretty stoked with how it turned out. I'll tell you how I did it after the pics.

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

22k gold leaf manicure

I started with polish-free, clean dry nails. Using a shallow bowl of hot water double boiler style, I warmed the dish with the clay and glue adhesive mixture to a nice liquid state and with a small artist's brush applied three coats of it to my nails, waiting for it to dry in between coats. Gold leaf is incredibly fragile. I applied it one nail at a time. First I wet the clay mixture generously with an artist's brush dipped in water. Then, ever so carefully, I picked up a piece of gold leaf with a pointed cotton swab tip moistened with water and floated it over the nail. In the best of all possible worlds, it would be sucked down to the surface by static electricity in a smooth even sheet. But gold leaf wrangling is no simple matter and I ended up needing to use several pieces on each nail to get full coverage. Using cotton and the lightest touch possible, I gently pressed the gold leaf onto the nail to seat it.

Then there was a long period of waiting for the gold leaf and the clay mixture to set up properly. This is kind of excruciating, because you can't touch the gold leaf or allow anything else to touch it. Edward said that he likes to give gold leaf three hours to set up on frames. What! I waited as long as I could, about two and a half hours. 

The gold leaf now affixed to my nails, I cleaned up the extra pieces adhering to the surrounding skin with my cleanup brush dampened with water. Then using Edward's burnisher, an artisan's tool used to smooth, polish and even out surfaces, I burnished the gold leaf using light pressure in small circular patterns over the nail. This gave it some shine. After that I topped it with a coat of HK Girl topcoat to protect it, and I was done.  

Edward said that the clay and glue mixture could be sanded when dry to get a smoother surface, and that's something I'd like to try in the future. Still, my himalayan nail ridges did provide an interesting texture to the look. 

love,
Liz 

ps The clay and glue mixture isn't waterproof and even though I used a topcoat, this manicure only lasted as long as I didn't immerse my hands in water. Once I'd done that, I started losing it in pieces. But it sure was fun and looked great while it lasted!