Nails Supreme Nail Art Pens

Nails Supreme Nail Art Pens

I've seen a few posts about these pens recently so I was quite excited when I was asked to review them as well! The nail art pens come in two sets of ten colours, and are double-ended, with one colour at each end of the pen.

One set is cream colours, plus silver and gold, and the other set is shimmer shades. There's a good range of colours across the two sets, although if I had to choose just one pack I'd go for the creams set since this includes black and white which are SO useful in nail art!

Nails Supreme Nail Art Pens - 'Cream' set

Nails Supreme Nail Art Pens - 'Shimmer' set

The pens actually consist of two 4.8ml bottles of polish screwed together - you can take them apart, reassemble them in different pairs if you wanted to take them travelling, or just use the single bottle if that fits in your hand more easily. Here's a single bottle:

Pull off the cap and you have a fine metal nib, rather like a technical drawing pen, which is great for fine lines, details and tiny dots!

The bottle itself is a softish plastic, made so you can gently squeeze to get the colour flowing through the nib. I found these fairly easy to use and control - I just needed to be a bit careful not to squeeze too hard or hold the nib vertical for too long or a big blob of polish would appear on the end. The pack includes a cleaning tool 

As well as the nib, there is also a brush - revealed by unscrewing the whole of the cap:

So you could use these as a basic polish if you felt so inclined (or remove polish to use with other nail art tools). Personally, I would have preferred if they had included a thin striper brush rather than a regular polish brush, as the pens are intended for nail art rather than everyday polishing. I'm not sure about the quality of the polish itself; it doesn't say anywhere on the packaging where the product is made or if it is 3-free. Some of the colours smell quite strong too when you open the bottle to use the brush. However, I'm not too concerned about the quality of the polish given that I'm only going to be using tiny quantities of it through the nail art nibs. 

I experimented with the pens to create a freehand paisley-meets-nudibranch design. I'm fascinated by nudibranchs - they're tiny marine invertebrates but they have the most fabulous patterns and colours. It's hard to believe some of them are real. Here's a link to a whole page of them - every one could be an inspiration for a mani!

Here's my mani anyway:

I drew on some curvy shapes with the orange shimmer pen, then added some curves in white and finally some tiny white dots. I found the pens easy to use and didn't have any problems with the flow of polish - not too much or too little. The dots are smaller than I could achieve with a dotting tool - I'm sure I'll be using these pens quite a bit for micro-dots in the future!

One thing to watch though, is to allow plenty of time for the polish to dry before adding topcoat. When you apply polish in nail art like this, it usually ends up much thicker than in a normal application, and you're not applying coats and letting each dry before you add the next either. So it needs a good amount of drying time or the topcoat will drag and smear the design and spoil it. If you can, the best thing to do would be to do your design in the evening, and let it dry overnight before topcoating in the morning!

Another tip that I use with all nail art - always make sure that you've got a thickish covering of topcoat over your base before you start, and that the topcoat is fully dry. Two reasons I like to do this - firstly, if I mess up with the nail art (or I just don't like how it turns out) I can easily remove it without affecting the base so I can have another go; and secondly, when I apply topcoat over my design, the topcoat can't make the base colour bleed into the design. I still remember a complex, squiggly white design I did over red three or four years ago - it took ages, and I was so pleased with it. Then I added topcoat and the red base polish bled into the white and made a horrible pink mushy mess. I've never done nail art without adding topcoat over my base colour since!

One final thing I think these pens could be really useful for - correcting mistakes (or blank spots) when stamping. I really enjoy stamping, and stamped designs, but there are often bits of the image that don't come out quite perfect, however careful you are. Also, I like my nails long sometimes, and the image plates aren't always long enough, so I end up freehanding in the missing bits with a fine brush or a nail art pen....... but the only nail art pens I already have are a black one and a white one and these have much thicker tips than these - so I see a great application for these pens here, for me at least.

Here's a stamped mani I've just done, picture isn't great because it's just a tiny detail cut from a bigger image, but the black didn't quite stamp perfectly... I tidied it up with my black Nails Supreme pen and that really saved the day!

These pens were sent for review; they are available to purchase from Presents for Men (seems a bit of strange thing for a retailer with a name like that to be selling, but, whatever). They are priced £19.99 for each pack of 10 colours - which seems pretty reasonable when you work out that it's only £2 a shade. The other thing that the very resourceful Vic at Glowstars has worked out is that the pens can be taken apart for cleaning or refilling - so even when the polish has gone there is still a useful nail art tool than can be used over and over! 

Freehand flowers..............

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

These flowers were inspired by some hand-made pottery I have, and an old jumper - both have a dark blue background with bold white flowers with yellow centres. The pottery has a lot of black line work too.

Since it's UK Indie Month, I used Nelly Polish Night Sky for the base; this is a super deep blue shimmer. I painted the petals freehand win Zoya Jacqueline, added the centres with Bourjois Sunny Sunday. When the flowers were fully dry (quite a long time, since I'd painted thickly), I added the line details with a Barry M Nail Art Pen in Black.

I love the way this turned out! I've been wearing it for a few days now, but sadly it's starting to look battered at the tips and grown out around the cuticles, so I'll have to change it :(

A few macros of the individual nails.............  I really like the contrast between the holo shimmer of the base and the opaque flowers.

And my thumb!

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

For others:

Darling Diva Firefly

Darling Diva Firefly over Illamasqua Load

I have another newly released polish from Darling Diva to share today. This one is Firefly, an acid green-yellow jelly with teal glitter and microglitter (some of the glitter looks to be holographic too). I was going to pair this with OPI Who The Shrek Are You but Sminkan wore Firefly over a similar green, so rather than repeat the lovely effect she got, I decided to go for a lighter base - Illamasqua Load - to create a brighter mani. If you don't know Illamasqua Load, it's a very pale yellow cream.

Darling Diva Firefly over Illamasqua Load

This turned out very pretty and summery! Teen Polish Junkie wore Firefly alone, without any base, and it looks great on her nails - but I don't think it would work as well on me with my longer nails and lighter skin tone.

I used two thin coats of Firefly over three coats of Illamasqua Load smoothed out with a thick coat of Seche Vite - pale yellow creams are notorious for streaking and I wanted a very even dense base for this mani.........because it's a glow in the dark polish!

Darling Diva Firefly over Illamasqua Load - photograph taken in the dark

With such a pale base, my nails glow almost white in the dark - very eerie, very cool. I love this effect, but it's very hard to capture on a photograph! This picture was taken with my compact camera in very low light, not pitch dark. In the photo, you can see how the different glitters block the light either fully (the coloured glitters, which appear black) or partly (the iridescent microglitter). The overall *glow* in the dark in real life is too intense to really see this though.

I'm really fascinated by the glowing in the dark, so I couldn't resist adding some nail art, especially after I'd seen this fantastic mani using black patterning over a glow in the dark polish at Lucy's Stash the other day. I wanted a bold, blocky pattern to give the glow in the dark the best chance of showing up. I drew the outline on with my Barry M black nail art pen, then filled in the black areas with Konad Special Polish in black and let it dry thoroughly before applying Sinful Colors Gel-Tech Top Coat. I chose the Konad black because I wanted as dense a black as possible (to block out the glowing pigments in the dark), even though I think this is the messiest make-up product I've ever owned when it comes to clean up and it's very prone to streaking. With a very careful application and letting it dry thoroughly before top coat I just about got away with it. I've been really impressed with the Sinful Gel-Tech Top Coat so far, it's thick, shiny, dries fast and doesn't shrink; and it's done great herein this mani too.

Here's the nail art in daylight:

Oh, and it's a Louboutin mani too! I hope this doesn't stain the insides of my nails!

And finally, in the dark. Different approach here from the plain mani above, as I couldn't get enough exposure to make a picture with my compact camera. These shots are very long shutter speed with my DSLR and macro lens, this really shows up the green glow ........... first, with an open door just letting a bit of room light in so you can see that this is four nails with a pattern on them.........

........... and finally, in total darkness, with just the Firefly parts of the mani glowing - when I move my hands around in the dark, this really does look like Fireflies dancing!!

Darling Diva Firefly was sent as a sample for my unbiased review; you can buy Darling Diva polishes from their Etsy Shop or from Llarowe or Mei Mei's Signatures - all these sellers ship worldwide. Norway Nails also stocks Darling Diva polishes and ships within Europe. The other polishes I used in this mani were all from my own collection and were purchased by me.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily with bold leopard spots (Barry M Nail Art Pens)

Barry M Nail Art Pens

I seldom do nail art, but when the Barry M Nail Art pens were released a few weeks ago, I couldn't resist buying a couple to try! They've been sitting around on my desk ever since, as I've not really thought up an interesting way to use them.

I'm a great fan of animal prints, so eventually I decided to try out the pens on a big-scale leopard design, which I copied from a leopard print cardigan of mine. I wasn't too sure this would work out, so I did my experimentation over an existing mani that was several days old - one of my all time favourites, Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily.

Here are a couple of pictures of RBL Aqua Lily on its own...... Aqua Lily is a vibrant teal. I'd describe it as a blue leaning teal; it reminds me of the colour of the sea on some of my favourite beaches in the Hebridean Isles. It has a subtle shimmer of pink running through it too.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily

On to the nail art pens, these are surprisingly easy to use. They have a very fine tip, and once you've got the polish (or whatever it is) flowing after the intial priming (you need to pump them up and down on a piece of paper until the pigment flows before using for the first time) the colour flows very smoothly and it's pretty much like drawing on your nails with a felt pen. MUCH easier than using a brush, as you don't have to worry about reloading the brush and the polish drying out as you work. I tried out a few simple line and dot designs first, and the pens are great for fine work. Also, if you mess up, it's easy to remove the design as you work; either scrape the bits where you've gone wrong off with another nail, or scrub the whole lot off with a nailbrush and hot soapy water!

For this design I drew on the white centres of the spots first, on all my nails, then went back and added the black.

I was really pleased with the way this turned out. Although it was only intended as an experiment, I ended up wearing it for several days, and I only removed it when I had a meeting at work that I thought it was rather unsuitable for.

Barry M Nail Art Pens

I bought the Barry M Nail Art Pens from my local Superdrug. Alternatively, they are available online at Barry M's website. I bought Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily from Rescue Beauty Lounge; this is a very popular colour and sold out very quickly, although again RBL often reinstate retired colours so if this is a colour you like it's worth keeping an eye out for an RBL 'Bring it Back' release. Aqua Lily has already been re-released like this in 2012.