It's the summer holidays, which means that not only the sandals and flip-flops have come out, forcing me into regularly putting nail varnish on my toes, but I also actually have time to sit down and paint my finger nails too. Unbelievable ! I've been trying out a funky new nail varnish set from LCN which sounds very hi-tech and space age. It's a special magnetic nail varnish and it comes with two different patterned magnets to create funky nail art.
The official blurb says : "LCN Magnetic Nail Polish is an exceptional nail polish that will tantalize its buyers. With the help of a magnet, the metal particles in the polish will perform magic by producing fascinating motifs on the nail within seconds." I received two gorgeous nail polishes, "Green Temptation" and "Ferromagnetic Blue", as well as two magnets, one with a star design and one with a diagonal design. These should create the designs below, if used individually or you can mix them up to create a totally unique design.
I put a coat of the green polish on my nails and it's gorgeous - a beautiful, shiny, metallic green colour that glints in the sun so is perfect for creating a fun summery look. It's quite thick so just one coat is enough to give great coverage.
The instructions say you should "Shake the desired Magnetic Nail Polish well, apply generously and hold the magnet right above the nail for 10 seconds and wait until the polish has dried. That way you will easily obtain exceptional nail art motifs." Well, I did one nail at a time so it wouldn't dry before I "did the business" with the magnet but nothing happened.
I reread the instructions and thought maybe I was holding the magnet too far away for it to work so I lowered it a bit more but I just managed to touch it onto the still wet polish leaving a gaping hole in the layer of varnish. I added some more to cover this up, so by now I had quite a thick layer of varnish, tried again and it still didn't create a design. Hmmm.
After several minutes of trying, I only ended up with one bit of pattern, on the tip of my thumb nail, where I can see two distinct diagonal lines. I'm not sure why it didn't work on all the others, but I will be experimenting to try and get a better result as this shows that it does work to some extent. Maybe I didn't put enough polish on ? Or maybe it dried too quickly and I didn't get in quick enough with the magnet ? Or maybe (naughty naughty) the fact that I didn't remove my scuffed nail polish before painting the Magnetic Nail Polish over the top interfered with it somehow.
In any case, with or without the funky magnetic nail art, I still absolutely love the shimmery, metallic green colour so I'll still be using it.
If any of you have tried it, let me know what I'm doing wrong and tell me how you got on ! I think it's probably down to me rather than the product ! Actually, from looking around on a few other blogs, it looks like it may work best on very long, false nails and even then, mainly on the tip rather than the part nearest the cuticle, so that may be why I had trouble on my short natural nails. (The Vampy Varnish blog has some great dos and don'ts here and the spectacular results she got have made me want to keep practising !)
Update : I've been practising and I'm definitely getting better !
My advice is, put on a really thick coat of varnish - it'll go all gloopy around the edges and will need tidying up with a cotton bud and some nail varnish remover afterwards (as you can see in the photo) but that seems to make it work best. Don't hold the magnet hovering above your nail -place it on the skin of your finger, perpendicular to the nail, then gently tilt it so it gets closer and closer to the nail into an almost horizontal position. Don't worry too much if it touches the varnish ever so slightly - if you've used a really thick coat, it should sort itself out and still look OK. If it's all messed up, just add some more over the top and start again. Above all, practice makes perfect so keep trying until you get better and - very important- don't wait until the last minute before a night out if you want to try getting funky designs that look good enough to be seen in public !
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : Polishes £8.65 each, Magnets £7.55 each, Start set (including all 8 polishes, 2 magnets and instructions) £67.15
for more information : http://www.beautyconcepts.co.uk/direct/nails/products.asp?DirItemID=8
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@needaphone I love it Can you come do my nails please?
ReplyDeleteI really need to sort my nails out and then this would look lovely
ReplyDeleteWho would of thought that nail polish could have been redesigned to include the use of magnets, and how the heck does someone come up with the idea in the first place - amazing!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea my teenage neice would love this!
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