Hey, everyone!
Today I've got a post that I've been so SO excited to share with you! It involves a company that is new to me and I think every nail artist needs to now about! I'm talking about Athena Rocks, and if you don't know about Athena and her amazing products yet then you will by the end of this post. Keep reading to find out more!
Athena Rocks is a company for exotic and unique nail decorations that is based out of Texas (if I'm not mistaken). Athena has such an eye for beautiful things! She has a huge variety of items available: semi-precious stones (like turquoise), opals (whole and crushed), abalone chips, feathers, snakeskin, tiny shells. and more, all perfect for making your nail art pop!
Athena is also incredibly sweet. I ordered a couple items from her - abalone shimmers (which I'm sharing today), opals, and a mix of semi-precious stones - and she very graciously sent me a BUNCH of other goodies which I will be sharing my thoughts on in the near future. So be on the lookout for my reviews on those other items! But like I said, today's post will be focusing on the abalone shimmers that I purchased from her.
You can see in the pictures above that the abalone shimmers are quite small and easy to work with. When you order any of the shimmers, you get quite a lot of them (the above picture only shows a fraction of what I got with my order). They're very thin and I figured out a pretty good way to use them. After finishing my base nail art, I used a small dot of clear builder gel to place the shimmers, then used a layer of builder gel to cover the shimmers and really hold them in place. This also helped smooth out the shimmers on my nail since the shimmers aren't very flexible, although they're thin. They lasted about a week on my nails before I eventually took them off - much longer than regular nail glue would've held up for me!
You can see the gorgeous natural colors of the abalone in all of the pictures I have here. Subtle color is my favorite!
For the nail art I created a mysterious deep sea mermaid look. I started with two coats of white polish on my index, middle, and pinky fingers, and two coats of black on my thumb and ring finger. On the white based nails I used black to add some abstract stripes at the tip and base of each nail. Then I used some of my color tint polishes (my own Bloom and Clear Skies and Garden Addict) to add some washes of color to mimic the abalone colors. Last I stamped a mermaid from Vivid Lacquer stamping plate VL025 and some coral from Bundle Monster plate BM-510 using black polish. After sealing with topcoat, I applied the abalone using my method described above.
Materials Used
Wet n Wild French White Creme
Wet n Wild Black Creme
The Nail Smith Bloom
The Nail Smith Clear Skies
The Nail Smith Garden Addict
Stamping plates VL025 and BM-510
Athena Rocks abalone shimmers
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