I did a bit of experimenting this week with an attempt to use up a bit of my own stash and some unloved nail polish. A little while ago, I somehow stumbled upon some really pretty resin flowers on Pinterest and fell down the rabbit hole a bit to discover people have done something similar with wire and nail polish of all things! I’ve attempted this in the past for small embellishments to an assemblage sculpture with some success. So, I thought I might take it a step further and try to make small flower charms using the same method. My progress pics below >>>
I did two coats of polish on the wire petals. Once those were dry, I embellished them a little bit using either iridescent medium, gold iridescent acrylic fluid paint, or silver calligraphy ink. I did a coat of satin sculpey glaze over that to harden the surface so that I could manipulate the petals once everything was fully dry. I used E6000 as the adherent for the wire petals onto the back of an acrylic “crystal” gem you can find giant packs of at Michael’s. After all petals were placed and the glue was dried up, I added a bit of gold paint for the center of each flower before giving the charms a generous coating of diamond glaze for the final effect. I love how they turned out
If you’ve got lonely nail polish in your stash, this is a great experiment to try out! My brain is already thinking “how big can we go with the petals and still get this effect…?” LOL
Do you dip the wires into the nail polish or paint them somehow with a brush?
We made something similar when I was in Girl Scouts (please don’t ask me how long ago that was!)
It was a special product made for the specific purpose of making flowers. You would dip the petal into the container. They came out translucent.
I like yours much better! But so many coats!.. I’m sure I would not have the patience for it. But I bet they are very sturdy and they are certainly beautiful!
thanks! I don’t dip them, I just use the nail polish brush to apply the lacquer onto the wire to create a sort of “film” I guess? that is the best way I can think of to describe it lol. You could probably get away with one coat, depending on the nail polish opacity but I did two for added strength.
Really adorable charms, great job