GET IT BEAUTY 2015 10/28/2015 'Which Manicure to Use' Show Notes, Special Guest Unistella, Creator of Glass Nails Trend

I hope you've been having a great weekend. If you're joining me for the first time, Get It Beauty is a popular Korean beauty show that brings experts and celebrities before a studio audience to discuss beauty tips and secrets. They used to subtitle their shows in English, but stopped around late spring/early summer. I started translating episodes a few months back, in case any one was interested in the content.

In this post...

• Part I: Fall 2015 Nail Trends with Special Guest UNISTELLA (nail artist and creator of the glass nails trend) 
• Part II: 3 Self-Taught Nail Art Experts Compete & Give Their Best Tips (pun intended)
• Part III: UNISTELLA Teaches the Trends - 3 Ways to Achieve Marbled Gemstone Nails

You can watch today's "Which Manicure to Use" show at the below link. This post is meant to be used as a viewing guide.

~*Link to Video*~





Part I: Fall 2015 Nail Trends with Special Guest UNISTELLA below is a link to her actual instagram @nail_unistella

A photo posted by 유니스텔라 네일_박은경 (@nail_unistella) on Oct 30, 2015 at 2:57pm PDT

2:45 The hosts introduct "the goddess of nails, nail artist Park Eun Kyung, who is also known as Unistella".

Host Lee Hanui can't keep her eyes of Unistella's nails. Unistella explains that the nails consist of "just a film, but the light reflects off of it in many directions". "It can look very shiny in some lights, but in others, it can look like you have nothing on your nails, like do you have your nails done? Or don't you? Do you? Don't you?"

Host Jungmin tells the audience that they might be confused as to why they're fussing over a nail artist who is wearing the latest nail trend. Isn't that only natural? "But in reality, Unistella CREATED the trend." "Unistella, what inspired you to do this?"

Unistella "Actually have you ever seen abalone? Abalone shells are iridescent, and I wanted to some how some way turn that into a nail look. The material used to do these nails aren't nail art materials. Actually, my supplier the other day was asking why there was so much demand. That's how popular these nails are getting."

Host Lee Hanui asks, "so what is the material?"

Unistella "It's called rainbow film. It's a very thin holographic film. Like the ones used in wrapping paper. It's the raw material that goes into making holographic wrapping paper".

Host Soyou "Could you also tell us about the hot trends right now?"

UNISTELLA'S FALL 2015 NAIL TREND FORECAST

1) Negative space nails are big.

2) The glass nails are huge as well. The design that people first started taking notice of is the one in the bottom right hand corner.

What's interesting about glass nails, is that the film can be applied to different color nail polish, and will look different on each color. You can also arrange them to look like jewels. Shown below.

It's mentioned that Unistella does nail art for celebrities. In fact, she's done each of the hosts' nails before. Here is a picture of Soyou's nail art from their session. They were crazy M&M decal nails.

Unistella has been noticing that clients often come with their own ideas of their desired colors, trends, and characters they'd like on their nails. Some have them drawn out for her before the session.

3 Self-Taught Nail Art Experts Compete & Give Their Best Tips

10:45 3 members of the audience are also nail art experts and they face off to create and show off their best work.

From left to right...

LOOK 1 | DRIED FLORALS

The audience member pictured on the left used dried flowers and hand painted on floral decorations to create her look.

Steps taken to create her look: 1. Applies a base color. 2. Uses dried flowers she purchased from a nail art store and rehydrates them using a wet cleansing wipe. This is so as to not crush them. 3. She removes the stems from the rehydrated flowers and taps them onto the nails. She places them around the edges and trims off the excess, instead of centering them. 4. She also draws on some floral designs using a slim pencil-like art brush.

LOOK 2 | MINION CHARACTER NAILS

The audience member pictured in the middle hand paints a minion character for her look. 

Steps taken to create her look: 1. She applies 2 coats of base coat to keep her nails from staining. Character nails require really pigmented nail polish so she's had it happen to her before. Unistella says this is fine if the base coat layers are thin. 2. She pains the nails yellow and blue, and uses black line sticker tape to make the goggles. 3. She then paints on the eyes using a nail dotting tool. 4. She even glues on googly eyes on a few fingers. 

4. Lastly, she applies a top coat. Her tip is to tap on the top coat instead of painting it on. Very similar to the "tok tok" tapping motion Koreans use in their skincare routines. This is to make sure the painting does not smudge.

Just a side note - she talked about how she creates her own nail decals. She makes little cookies and ice cream cone decals by molding clay into shapes, painting them, boiling them to make them hard, and then sealing them with a top coat. Could she be Unistella 2.0?


LOOK 3 | BURGUNDY NEGATIVE SPACE STICKER NAILS

The audience member pictured on the right is going to use stickers and water decals to create a negative space nail look.

Steps taken to create her look: 1. Since she is going to use gel nail polish, she likes to apply a thin coat of bonder on just the tip of the nails. It goes on right after the base coat. This keeps the gel nail polish from cracking or peeling off. Unistella says that bonders control oil well, and she likes to think of them as pH balancing the nails. 2. She starts applying line tape in different patterns. There is a star on one of her nails. Her tip is to leave 1 mm of space from each edge, to make sure the stickers don't peel off easily. Unistella says this is a great tip. 3. She's also brought some decals that need to be soaked in water. They look like little tribal tattoos. Unistella says she likes to use these sparingly in negative space looks because the designs can get busy. The nail artist hydrates the portion of the decal she wants to use, soaking it for 10 seconds. 4. To apply, she pushes the decal onto the nail. She likes using these decals because they are thinner than stickers and last longer than them as well.

UNISTELLA Teaches the Trends - 3 Ways to Achieve Marbled Gemstone Nails

28:45 A new emerging trend in Korea is marbled gemstone nail art.

They come in many colors, like the onyx and the black and white marble inspired ones above.

Unistella shows off some of the amethyst inspired looks she's created above.

Red nail polish makes for a beautiful garnet look.

Unistella starts her tutorials.

TUTORIAL 1 | Onyx marble nails using the painting method

STEP 1. Paint a base coat of black nail polish all over the nails.

2. Take a gray color, and paint it in an S-swirl pattern across the black paint.

3. Take a slim pencil art brush and mix the gray and black together so that the edges blur.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 using a white nail polish. This will create a more layered marble effect.

5. Done!

TUTORIAL 2 | Amethyst inspired nails using an even easier saran wrapping method

PREP. This look is achieved by using gel nail polish, so keep all of your gel nail polish bottles open.

STEP 1. Take your base color (an orchid color in this case) and dot it into a little flower shape. This can be done roughly.

2. Take the next color (Unistella uses a cornflower blue) and dot it into the empty spaces. Again this can be done roughly.

3. Take the third color, in this case white, and dot it into the remaining empty spaces. This is roughly done again.

4. Now take a piece of saran wrap and place it on the nail. Tap it with your thumb and hold it there for at least 10 seconds. Any less time, and the gel nail polish will lift off with the saran wrap.

5. Then rip the saran wrap off quickly, in one piece.

6. Clean up the edges of the nails using nail polish remover on a cleansing wipe.

7. She applied an optional layer of gold sparkles.

8. Then she tapped on a last layer of top coat.




TUTORIAL 2 | Turquoise nails using a more ambitious 'spraying' method

STEP 1. Paint the turquoise base color on the entire nail.

2. Apply tape all the way around the nail.

3. Take 3 drops of black nail polish, and drop it into a cup of water.

4. Spray some hair spray into the black nail polish + water cup. This will cause the black nail polish to swirl.

5. Dunk all of your fingers into the water at once. (Unistella stirs the water while the fingers are dunked, but does not explain if this is important or not.)

6. After dunking the nails, when you see the nails take on the black swirl pattern, take the nails out of the water.

7. Take the tape off.

8. Apply a matte top coat (using a tapping motion of course) to complete the look.

I'm feeling like painting my nails right now. What about you? Will you try these looks out?

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