Ever since my mom and I went to Japan for New Years ‘08, I’ve been obsessed with Japanese style 3D manicures. It’s completely ridiculous. I hate them. But I love them and I want them. Girls out there have these lethal lengthed talons, so heavily adorned with plastic junk, I’m not quite sure how they can manage to lift their hands with all that extra weight. It really puts Brooklyn and Bronx girls’ airbrushed nails to shame. Just look at these leopard spots and 3D roses, courtesy my FAVORITE Japanese nail blog, AmiNail.
And this is actually pretty tame and classy compared to the nail jobs I saw on some of the girls on Japanese TV shows- there was a New Years special with Natsuko “Gal” Sone (professional competitive eater and J-pop star) downing 20lbs. of sushi… complete with gigantic plastic bows and flowers popping off her fingers. I was so scared she was going to choke on her manicure accents.
So naturally, I hunted down a nail salon in New York that does this style of manicure. Valley NYC. They’re on Orchard Street (oh course! Duh! I should have known!) and not only sell clothes, wax, and do nails, but you can order a bowl of acai berry to enjoy while you’re getting worked on. In Japan, it can cost around $150 for a full set. I’m guessing it will be the same here. Maybe I’ll just puff-paint my own nails or glue on some quarter machine toys. It kind of looks the same.
Or maybe I’ll stop being really ridiculous because, come on. This is kind of ugly.
But honestly, I kind of want this:
(again, from AmiNail)
edited June 16th to add: after doing loads of research, I believe some of the flowers and things are called “ceramic flowers”, but are actually little charms made of fimo clay that sometimes are glued straight to the nail, but sometimes have a post that is glued into a hole drilled in the nail! But most of the decoration is done with a 3D acrylic powder mixed with a bit of monomer… I found a video here that shows someone making the 3D flowers…
What happened to the cupcake nails. They were the gaudiest.
If, by “ugly” you mean “the best thing ever”, then yes, they are hideously ugly.
nice, may i use this on my site http://www.letsbeauty.net????
I don’t want to trash talk about this place but it’s not really great. The place you want to go to overcharges & it’s not even sculptured nails.
Hopefully you can find somewhere that has Japanese trained nail artists. You can check out this site out, but she’s located in Los Angeles. I personally do nails as well but I’m in L.A. too. Here’s the site. http://www.himenail.com
This is the coolest manicures I have ever seen! If went to school with these manicures I would be sooo Popular! Especially if I told them how much I spent on them!