Lacquer Slacker Liz: gold leaf

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

WingDust Collections Steel Town Girl

I am such a blowhard. Honestly, the minute I make any proclamations about anything you can bet your bottom dollar that it's just a matter of time before I'll be eating my words. Like, remember what I said about not wanting any more polishes with shreds in them not too long ago? Well guess what I have to show you today? A polish with shreds in it.

But not just any polish with shreds, this one's a WingDust, and Stephanie, the owner and creative force behind WingDust, with her amazing formulary skills has made a believer out of me. So many reviewers have praised her magic touch with glitter polish formulations over and over, but jumping on bandwagons without a good first-hand reason is just not right. After working with this particular polish, I can tell you that I got my reason and I'm on board.

The polish is Steel Town Girl, a blackened tealy steel blue linear jelly holo full of potentially problematic components: iridescent aqua glass-like mylar shards and 23 carat gold leaf shredlets. Sounds hazardous, doesn't it? When this polish was first released I was just stunned and in awe of the photos I saw in reviews. Steel Town Girl was utterly unlike any polish I'd been attracted to before, so rarified and boldly complex. I secretly lusted after it while simultaneously fearing it (or rather, the application of it). However, it was constantly sold out at Llarowe so I never had the chance to step up. And then, lo! After Llarowe's last WingDust restock, there it was (briefly) in stock, and since I was getting other WingDust glitters I swallowed my apprehension and popped it into my cart.

Application was SO impressive! The consistency of Steel Town Girl is fluid and smooth but has these shardy shreds of mylar and gold leaf floating in it like icebergs. As advised, I took my time and was careful and deliberate with the brush, letting each coat dry before applying the next, and those components lay down like sweet lambs on the nail. No tumbling or dragging or stacking or spiky stick-ups, no protrusions over the free edge that weren't easily remedied with a tip-wrapping swipe of the brush. Huzzah! Pigmentation is buildable, with wearable opaque coverage in two coats. I used three for this manicure because I was greedy for the gold leaf shredlets and giddy with success. Cleanup was surprisingly easy; the gold leaf came right off without any of the limpet-like behavior I was expecting. Steel Town Girl dries naturally in good time to a remarkably smooth, shiny finish with only a slight amount of surface texture from the components. One layer of topcoat, and every nail but one was glassy smooth and glossy. The one nail had a large-ish mylar shard at the apex of the c-curve that I could still feel after topcoat, but it was the only one.

Photos show three coats of Steel Town Girl over Seche Rebuild treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. Wow, between the dark color of the polish and the reduction of bright indirect light through my skylight due to the sun being so much lower in the sky, I had a really hard time trying to capture this one. I suppose I could try to figure out how to edit for less contrast while maintaining the vibrancy, but I really don't like the idea of having to tinker in photoshop to get pics that work. Hmm.

WingDust Collections Steel Town Girl

I took a set outside in direct sun also, which encourages the holo pigment in this polish to throw all kinds of rainbow sparks. The red ones are especially striking with the color of the base and the colors and visual textures of the components. You don't see a precisely delineated flair with this polish, but the holo effects are still strong (if that makes any sense... I'm not sure it does, actually... oh well!). The great amount of contrast between light and dark and the holo response to the sun in these pics prevented me from coaxing the blue base color to show as nicely as it does in person, but I'll let you be the judge of whether they are helpful to you.

WingDust Collections Steel Town Girl

Well suffice to say that jpegs don't do Steel Town Girl justice. It's so much more dramatic and jewel-like in person, and has a more cohesive presence than these photos show. The teal tones in the base color give it a midnight blue appearance and the more light there is, the more the gold leaf stands out, speckling the inky base with greenish gold glowing irregular shapes. The mylar shards spring forth when the light hits them just right, flashing colors of vivid cerulean, royal blue and blue-green, and all along the way there are tiny sparks of blue, green, yellow and red from the holo pigment. There's a lot going on in this polish, but it holds together on the nail in a stunning, dimensional way, creating a miniature stealthy collage of elements on each nail.

love,
Liz

Monday, March 24, 2014

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

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!