Sunday, October 7, 2012

Review: Born Pretty Store Loose Foil Sheets

Hello!

Today I have a product review for you, some loose foil sheets from Born Pretty Store. They contacted me and asked me to pick a product I wanted to review, and I've been dying to try these, so I snapped them up! You can see the foil directly by clicking here, but of course I'm going to show it to you as well.

This foil is a little different than the foil that comes on rolls. These come crumpled up in little pots, and are meant to go on as more of a thick layer than the rolls of foil are. This is how they come packaged:

Loose foil sheets in pots
 This set comes with three colors, gold, orange-gold, and green-gold.

One of the pots up close
 When you pull the foil out of the pots, they smooth out into little rectangles:

One of the foil sheet just out the pot

Unfolded foil sheet

You can use them either as a whole sheet, or you can rip the sheets apart to get little pieces; they are a bit fragile, so you want to work carefully. But they're not so fragile that they crumble at any touch.

I tried two different looks and techniques that I'm going to show you. For the first, I wanted to use strips of the gold foil as textural elements, together with stamping. To do this I took clear topcoat and used the saran wrap technique to apply it in strips across my nails (use some wadded-up saran wrap to dip into the polish and then dab onto the nails). I then laid the foil on top of the wet area, and pressed it down gently, while pulling the extra fail away.

After waiting for a moment, I took an eye shadow brush and softly brushed over the gold foil. This removes the extra gold not held down by the topcoat, and smooths the edges.

To show you what it looks like if you apply topcoat directly to the nail instead of using the saran wrap method, I put topcoat directly onto my index finger; you can see how it will hold down a more solid strip of the foil if you do it this way.

I used a darker section of the foil on my middle finger, and lighter sections on the other fingers. Here is what it ended up looking like after I applied all the foil:



Gold foil applied over glitter polish and brushed.

To complete the look, I stamped over the polish and foil using Bundle Monster plate BM12, and Barry M Silver Foil polish. Then I covered it with a coat of Seche Vite to protect the foil and the polish. Here's the final look:





For the second look, I decided to try making French tips with the foil. For this, I tried a different application method; I used nail glue instead of topcoat. I didn't want it to have a perfect edge, so I brushed the tip of each nail with the nail glue free-hand, and immediately put the foil on top of the glue. Then I pulled gently on the foil to separate it from the edge of the nail glue, and gently pushed it off the edge of the tip with a fingernail of my other hand. Here is what it looked like with one application of the gold foil:


Gold foil French tips--one layer over glitter polish

 As you can see, I messed up a bit on my middle finger, so I decided to put a second layer on; this is how it looked with two layers:


Two coats of bling

Overall, I found this surprisingly easy to work with, and a little bit goes a long way. For all of what you see here, I didn't even use half of a single piece of foil, and there were additional small pieces left over (which you should save and use for other looks). Both the glue and top-coat methods worked well, and the foil went on without fuss. And look at that bling!

Right now the box of 12 sheets pictured above goes for $6.28 on the Born Pretty Store site; you can find it here. Also, if you use my code, MCL91, you'll get 10% off of your entire purchase.

Oh, and...you may have noticed that I didn't identify the polishes I'm wearing in these pictures...I'll be doing a review later this week on these gorgeous mystery polishes. :)

Thanks for looking!

Xoxox,
M.

(The products reviewed in this post were sent to me for an honest review.)




10 comments:

  1. hello from sunny south ALABAMA !

    Great review. Loved all of the outcomes. I have used the "fluttery" foil and I really like the surprise of how it turns out.

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    1. Thank you so much! ::Waves from heat-wave California:: I was a little afraid of this stuff when I first used it, but it really isn't that hard, and the effect is soooo pretty...If you have links to you stuff, I'd love to see it! :)

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  2. Totally LOVING the first mani...reminds me of antique things. Love the second one, too, but more the colors rather than the French tip-just not a style I like on my nubs....stunning on you, though! May have to try some....never tried toils before...

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    1. Thank you! I admit the first one is my favorite too--I love a collaged, antique look. If you like the color of the polish, stay tuned...I think I have the review of the polishes scheduled for Wednesday. :)

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  3. I love the purple and gold together.

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    1. Thank you so much! I do love how the foil goes with that polish...:)

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  4. That purple is perfect with the gold leaf. Both the designs you made are really pretty, I'd be worried about wasting the gold leaf, how brave you are!
    Love it.

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    1. Thank you thank you! Honestly, all that playing around I did for both manicures all together was only about twenty cents worth of foil. It's not real gold leaf like the 24 carat sheets, so it's a lot cheaper. :)

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