Winter Inspired Frosty Nails

I always try to be a courteous host whenever people come over to my house, but I recently found that some sugar I had purchased to go with tea had gone well past its sell-by date (I literally know nobody who has sugar with their tea!). But I didn't want to simply throw the sugar away, so I decided to use it for a bit of nail art. The end result was a very frosty look nail, which really suits this colder time of year.

What I did is very straight-forward. First up, I simply prepped my nails.

Then I painted on a further coat of clear top coat nail polish and whilst it was still wet, I dipped it in to the sugar. For the best results, you need a coarser sugar with bigger crystals. I used granulated sugar.

And here is how it turned out! Afterwards, I simply cleaned up around the edges. You could use a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover, but I found I only had a few stray sugar crystals and I was simply able to brush them off. One thing that is important is to make sure the sugar crystals are firmly pressed on to your nails. I did attempt to cover the sugary nails with a further top coat to seal the sugar, but I found that if you used too much it started to dissolve the sugar and the final effect wasn't so effective. It does mean you risk brushing sugar crystals off when you do this art. If I were to do this for a meet, I would prep and colour my nails first and just do the sugar layer at the last minute. It is very quick to do, especially if you have a quick drying top coat and your sugar laid out on a small plate for quick application.

After trying the look with just the sugar, I decided to try it over coloured nails and it worked so much better. I just made sure that the coloured polish was completely dry before applying an extra layer of top coat and sugar. I definitely recommend experimenting with colours. I went for a cool lilac colour but I could see this working with deeper, warmer colours as well. 

So I think I may have found a cheap and effective way of doing nail art. The good news is I have plenty of sugar to practice with and hopefully improve the final effect. It doesn't look too impressive in my photos, but in person the sugar sparkles and catches the light. It really does look at though my nails are covered in frost. I think the key is to use thin layers of polish. And one final warning- which sort of goes without saying- no matter how tempting, do not lick your sugary fingers! I am pretty sure that nail polish doesn't taste so good...