So I’m seeing that some of the girlies want “regular” flats, not sneakers, for the summer… couldn’t be me! To prove my love for kicks, I’m bringing you another sneaker-inspired nail art set.
This set is round two of my New Balance x Salehe Bembury DIY custom press-on nails – we have several more rounds to go. These nails are based on the New Balance x Salehe Bembury 1000s “Fog Be The Cloud” collaboration in the “Berry” colorway. These sneakers have so many colors on them that I could create several nail art variations, and I just might revisit them in the future…
Keep reading to learn how I created this at-home press-on nail set.
The Vision
As with all of my DIY nail art sets, I go through my 6-step design process called The POLISH Method. Allow me to take you through the six steps below.
Point of View
My last set, “It Bees Like That”, was pretty dark (it was mostly black), so I wanted to turn things around and go for a more colorful look this time. I didn’t have any particular colors in mind; I just wanted this set to have an edgy Spring vibe.
Origin
Because I knew I wanted a colorful press-on nail set, I turned to my shoe collection to find one of my most colorful pairs of sneakers. At first, I was leaning towards a pair that was mostly tan with pops of bold colors, but because I wanted to test certain color-mixing techniques, I opted for the New Balance x Salehe Bembury 1000s “Fog Be The Cloud” sneakers. I’ll get into the specific color-mixing techniques I’m talking about in the “Inventory” and “Highlight & Harmonize” parts of this section.
Layout
Almond. Medium length. One day I’ll try longer nails, but as for the shape? I’m an almond girlie through and through. I have long, but wide-ish nail beds, and I think the pointiness of the almond shape helps to visually balance my nails. Now, this could all be in my head, but so far, I like the look, so I’ll stick with it unless another nail art design calls for something different.
Inventory
Remember the color-mixing techniques I mentioned earlier? Well, because there is a major ombre “moment” on the upper of the “Fog Be The Cloud” shoe (specifically in the Berry colorway), I wanted to replicate that type of color-blending effect on the nail. There are lots of ways to create color-blend/ombre/aura effects when doing nail art, so I tried three of them: blooming gel, pat gel, and eyeshadow. The sneaker also has an iridescent layer over the ombre, so I used chrome to recreate that effect. I’ll go more into depth about these techniques in “The Execution” section further down in this post.
Sketch
Excuse the scribble-scrabble, but here’s the sketch, aka “The Set Map” for this set.
Looking at the sneakers, I saw about 10 different colors on them. I wanted to incorporate as many of those colors as possible, so I wrote down each color on The Set Map, drew a line underneath the color name with a color pencil that was a close match for it, so that I could easily visualize all of the colors and see which colors I wanted to put on each nail. I ended up using 9 of those colors – not too shabby.
I also wanted to have some geometric shapes in this press-on nail set, so I turned to the “1000” on the tongue and front side panel of the shoe for some linework shape inspiration, as you can see on the index and middle fingers.
Sketching out the design on The Set Map really helped me with two major things for this set. First, I was able to write down which color-blending technique I planned to use on each nail, so I wasn’t lost during the middle of the nail art execution. The second way sketching helped me was that I wrote down the color mix instructions for the custom colors I needed to make with the pat gels. I’m not a professional artist, and I have taken zero color theory classes, but I looked up color mixing formulas on Pinterest to get me started. I’ve curated some color mixing guides on my “Color Mixing for Nail Art” Pinterest board if you want to check it out.
Highlight & Harmonize
The one element I wanted to carry throughout the whole set was color blending, so each nail has some form of blended color effect by using blooming gel, pat gel, and/or eyeshadows. Some techniques worked out better than others, but it was fun to try them all out.
This DIY custom press-on nail set doesn’t really have a “hero” nail, as I think all stand out individually while creating a comprehensive set. However, as a nod to the name of the sneakers, I added a few clouds on the thumb and ring fingers.
The Execution
This is a gel polish nail art set because all of my DIY custom press-on nails are done using gel polish products. I use gel polish because, unlike nail lacquer that starts drying as soon as you take the brush out of the bottle, I can wipe away gel nail art designs until I’m completely satisfied and then cure once things look how I want them to.
I keep talking about the color blending techniques I used for this sneaker-inspired nail art set, so let me elaborate a bit about each of them here.
Blooming gel – Blooming gel is a product that encourages color gel polish to spread and softly diffuse before curing. To use blooming gel, apply a light layer of the blooming gel polish all over the nail, and before curing, apply your desired color gel polish with a dotting tool or liner brush in the desired spot on the nail. As soon as you like what the effect looks like, cure the nail immediately, or else your color gel polish will continue spreading. I typically use blooming gel for croc effect nails, but I have used it to create an aura effect before, so I wanted to see what it would look like if I did a straight line blooming effect. I only used blooming gel on the pinky nails, and while I think they’re nice, the effect isn’t that striking. I think this effect would’ve looked more interesting if I’d used two different gel polishes for the lines, so the colors could blend into each other.
Another note on creating patterns with blooming gel: I tried to create the teal double line effect with a custom color pat gel mix, but the pat gel did not move when placed over the uncured blooming gel. I had to make a teal custom color mix using bottled gel polish that matched the pat gel custom color.
Pat gel – I chose to try color blending with pat gels for two reasons: 1) I needed to do a lot of custom color mixing, and pat gel palettes are amazing for that, and 2) pat gels seem to be the easiest way to create the ombre effect with gel products. This technique was great for the ombre effect I created on the ring finger nails. Both the dark teal and magenta were custom colors I created with the pat gel palette, and I think the ombre effect looked good. I’m excited to use my pat gel palettes for future nail art sets. See the “The Toolkit” section below the links to the two pat gel palettes I used for this set.
Eyeshadow – Correct me if I’m mistaken, but using eyeshadows is the O.G. way to create the aura color effect when doing at-home nail art. I know nail technicians often use airbrushing for flawless aura designs, but “ain’t nobody got time for that” when you’re DIY-ing nail art at home. Eyeshadows create beautiful color blends that you can make as light or as bold as you like. I used this technique on the thumbs and index fingers (the index finger nail is my favorite in the set). I have an eyeshadow palette reserved for nail art, so that I will be doing a lot more eyeshadow aura sets.
Nail by Nail
First up, prep: buff and etch the nails!
I etch the underside of each nail using an e-file to help create a rough surface area so that the nails stay on for at least 2 weeks once applied. I then buff the top of each nail to ensure the gel polish does not peel off.
For this set, both hands mirror each other, but each finger has its own design, so I approached the design execution differently.
Thumb:
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Solid ivory gel polish all over nail, 2 coats, full cure between each coat
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Apply custom periwinkle pat gel color in random places on the nail using a small square sponge + handle*, full cure
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Using an eyeshadow applicator sponge, apply teal and magenta eyeshadow in random places on the nail, overlapping with the periwinkle patches so that the ivory polish is no longer visible
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Chrome-specific non-wipe top coat, 1 coat, 60-second cure
- Clear mirror-effect chrome powder application all over the nail with an eyeshadow sponge, lightly brush away excess chrome powder
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Using a dotting tool and a liner brush, create cloud patterns on the nail with white liner polish, 1 coat, full cure
- To create clouds, create a wide upside-down “V” pattern using a dotting tool and white liner polish; “V” shape can be slightly irregular and have 5-6 dots
- Then, using a liner brush, pull white liner polish down from the dots to create the desired cloud design
- Clear builder gel, 1 coat, full cure
- Glossy top coat, 1 coat, full cure
Index:
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Solid ivory gel polish all over nail, 2 coats, full cure between each coat
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Using an eyeshadow applicator sponge, apply bright green and magenta eyeshadow in random places on the nail, overlapping with each other so that the ivory polish is no longer visible
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Using a liner brush, paint on the geometric design with orange-red gel polish, 1 coat, full cure
- Mix a bit of embo powder with the gel polish to give it a thicker consistency so that it’s not runny when doing the line work nail art.
- Clear builder gel, 1 coat, full cure
- Glossy top coat, 1 coat, full cure
Middle:
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Solid deep mustard color all over the nail, 2 coats, full cure between each coat
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Apply custom forest green pat gel color in random places on the nail using a small square sponge + handle*, full cure
- Matte top coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Using a liner brush, paint on the geometric design with white liner gel polish, 1 coat, full cure
- Clear builder gel, 1 coat, full cure
- Glossy top coat, 1 coat, full cure
Ring:
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Solid white gel polish all over the nail, 2 coats, full cure between each coat
- Apply streaks of the custom teal pat gel color on the top half of the nail using the flat end of an orange wood cuticle stick; do not cure
- Apply streaks of the custom magenta pat gel color on the bottom half of the nail using the flat end of an orange wood cuticle stick; do not cure
- Using a small square sponge + handle*, tap the teal pat gel into the nail until all of the white on the top half of the nail is covered; do not cure
- Repeat step 5, but with a new sponge on the magenta bottom half of the nail
- Using the same sponge from step 6, gently blend in the teal and magenta colors so that there is no strong line of demarcation between the two colors, full cure
- Repeat steps 3-7
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Chrome-specific non-wipe top coat, 1 coat, 60-second cure
- Using a dotting tool and a liner brush, create cloud patterns on the nail with white liner polish, 1 coat, full cure
- Clear builder gel, 1 coat, full cure
- Glossy top coat, 1 coat, full cure
Pinky:
- Clear base coat, 1 coat, full cure
- Solid bright orange gel polish all over the nail, 2 coats, full cure between each coat
- Apply a thin layer of blooming gel all over the nail; do not cure
- Using a thin liner brush, paint on 2 thin lines of the custom teal color (gel polish, not pat gel), full cure once the color polish spreads to the desired design
- Clear builder gel, 1 coat, full cure
- Glossy top coat, 1 coat, full cure
*Most pat gel palettes come with small square sponges + the handle, but if you need to purchase the tool separately, this is the one I use.
Here are a few more tips I think are non-negotiables:
- Always follow the curing instructions based on the safety guidelines for each specific product.
- Use an appropriate UV/LED lamp – at least 48W. Those handheld flashlight ones and tiny 1-nail-at-a-time lamps do not completely cure gel polishes.
- Wear nitrile gloves at all times when handling gel products!
Here’s a step I never skip when making homemade press-on nails:
After each set is done, even when the non-wipe top coat is fully cured, there is likely some residue left on the press-on nails. I also use a lint-free wipe with 70% isopropyl alcohol and wipe each nail. I then take another lint-free wipe, dip it into some water with a bit of Dawn dish soap, and wipe each nail. Finally, I take one more lint-free wipe with 70% isopropyl alcohol and do one final wipe down of each nail. This gives me peace of mind that any residual inhibition layers are completely wiped off.
The Toolkit
Now that you know how I did this set, I’ll fill you in on all of the products I used below. I know it looks like you have to buy out the entire nail supply store, but rest, babe. Most of these things are items you buy just once or a couple of times a year. They’re mostly items you likely already have in your DIY Press-on Nail Starter Kit.
Base & Prep:
- Full cover gel nail tips
- Nail stands
- Adhesives to secure the tips to the stand
- Disposable pads to cover the working area
- Nail Drill/E-file
- Nail drill bits
- Nail buffer blocks
- 70% Isopropyl alcohol
- Push-top container for alcohol
- Lint-free wipes
- Clear base coat
- Matte top coat (to layer underneath design work)
- Clear builder gel
- Nitrile gloves
Colors:Note: I used two different pat gel palettes to create custom color mixes (Palette 1 | Palette 2). Also, for this eyeshadow palette, I numbered the colors myself so that I’d be able to keep track of which exact colors I use in a nail art design.
- Custom colors:
- Magenta (pat gel) – ½ red + ½ white (both from palette 1) + drop of light blue (from palette 2)
- Teal (pat gel) – 4 dots blue + 2 dots white + 1 dot yellow (all from palette 1) + 1 dot brown (from palette 2)
- Teal (bottled gel polish) – same ratio of colors as pat gel custom mix
- Blue – DND 733 Heartbreak
- White – DND 448 Snow Flake
- Yellow – DND 2516 Sun Rebels
- Brown – DND 053 Spice Brown
- Periwinkle blue (pat gel) – light blue + dot of black (both from palette 2)
- Forest green (pat gel) – light green + dot of black + dot of brown (all from palette 2)
- Deep mustard (bottled gel polish) – Lanfo C88 + Lanfo C85 (both colors discontinued)
- Eyeshadow colors (all from the palette shown and linked above):
- Magenta – #2
- Teal – #31
- Bright green – #21
- Solid Gel Colors:
- Orange-red – DND 715 Island Punch
- White – PLA 289 French White
- Ivory – Yogurt Nail Grocery Light Ivory #02
- White Liner – Kokoist – Color Gel – Markers Line Non-Wipe Thick White
Finishes & Effects:
- Blooming gel
- Chrome Non-Wipe Top Coat – GAOY
- iPrincess Clear mirror effect chrome powder (I purchased mine in person at Rita Nail Supply in the Bronx, NYC)
- 3D Powder – Show Me Korea Powdery Embo Powder
Tools
- Small square sponges + handle (for pat gel ombre effect)
- Eyeshadow applicators (for rubbing in chrome powder)
- Foundation brush (for brushing away excess chrome powder)
- Dotting tool
- Liner brushes
- Color mixing palette
- UV/LED lamp
Top Coat:
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