I have finally taken and edited step by step pictures on how to use acrylic powders and an acrylic mold to make an acrylic 3D image.
WARNING!!! BE IN A VENTILATED SPACE WHEN YOU DO THIS!!!! the acrylic solution smells terrible!
Step 1: Get all materials ready!
1. Acrylic nail powders
2. Glass vial to pour acrylic solution into (can be plastic too)
3. Acrylic solution
4. Acrylic mold (when you are really good you won't need a mold and can freehand your shapes)
5. Paint brush (try to get one that has a similar shape to the one in the picture)
6. Paper towel (in the background of the picture the white thing is a sheet of paper towel)
Step 2
1. Transfer acrylic solution to vial. You don't need a lot, if there isn't enough then you can add more LATER. Once you pour it out do not return the unused liquid back to the original bottle, you do not want to contaminate the original solution. If you use black acrylic powder the solution will turn black...then if you use the same liquid for white acrylic powder your white will have a tinge of black in it.
2. To transfer the liquid to the vial I poured it down the paintbrush so there was no spilling or dripping
3. The second picture shows how much I poured into the bottle...not much
Step 3
1. acrylic liquid poured: check
2. acrylic powder opened: check
3. mold chosen: check
4. paintbrush: check
5. paper towel: check
Step 4
1. Dip brush into acrylic solution, make sure brush is completely covered in the solution not just the tip
Step 5
1. Tap the brush against the edge to get rid of excess liquid. You want the brush wet but you don't want it to be dripping wet
Step 6
1. I felt that the brush was still a bit too wet so I dabbed it on the paper towel. This part takes trial and error/ experience to determine if your brush is too wet or not wet enough to work with the acrylic powder
Step 7
1. Dip the moist brush into the powder (in this stage you can see that if you acrylic liquid solution was contaminated black and you dipped your brush into the powder, the white powder would become black....this is something you don't want)
Step 8
1. Right when you dip your brush into the powder the powder will suddenly stick to you brush ...it will clump to your brush
Step 9
1. If your brush is damp enough the clump of powder will become liquid after a few seconds ...you can tell that this has happened when the clump of powder becomes shiny and looks like a liquid drop
Step 10
1. Take the liquid acrylic drop and place it into the mold shape you want
Step 11
1. You can clean up the mold shape by dipping your brush into the acrylic liquid and swipe around the mold. You want to clean up the excess acrylic because when you pop out the mold design you don't want bits and pieces hanging from it.
Step 12
1. After a minute or even less depending on how big your design, is you can pop it out of the mold. Your design doesn't have to be super dry, it is actually better if it hasn't completely dried when you pop out the design. You can test the dryness by poking the design a bit, as long as you can pop it out and it retains the shape then it's good.
2. The acrylic mold is made out of silicon? rubber? anyway...it's flexible so you can bend it like the picture below to pop out the design
Step 13
1. The reason why I said it is best to pop out the design before it completely dries is that if it is still slightly soft you can bend it a bit...see the image below.
2. You want to bend it slightly so that it dries with a curve so that it complements the curve on your nail. If it dried flat it's harder to stick on to you nail.
Step 14
1. I use clear nail polish and stick it onto my nails, put another layer of nail polish on top and done!
Step 15
1. Cleaning the mold, just dip your brush in the acrylic solution and swipe over the mold.
2. you may want to rinse it under water at the end to remove the strong smell of the acrylic solution.
Done! :o)
The products in this post was provided to me for review. Please see my disclosure page for more information
