Nail Candy: 50+ ideas for Totally Cool Nails

by Donne Geer

From badass Batman-inspired manicures to sweet ‘n’ simple dots, from hilarious French-fry nails to far-out galaxy ’dos, this book will teach anyone how to give themselves truly creative manicures—without a trip to the salon.

Nail Candy is sassy, fun, and full of DIY nail art tutorials that anyone can do. It contains more than 50 ideas presented in full-color photographs and cute line-art illustrations that show you exactly how to achieve a certain style, ranging from arty to girlish to hardcore and more. You will learn how to mask your nails off to create simple patterns, add studs and decals for edgy flare, and create more ambitious paintings that rival works of art. Sample contents include:

• Argyle nails
• Panda nails
• Galaxy nails
• Spiky nails
• Mustache nails
• Art Deco nails
• Tie-dye nails
• Dia de los Muertes nails
• Navajo-inspired nails
• Rockabilly nails
• Butterfly nails
• Kiwi nails
• Peacock nails
• Newsprint nails

Genres: Nonfiction, Fashion

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 26, 2013

Reviews

[Shelli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Nail Candy: 50+ ideas for Totally Cool Nails is terrible. The biggest problem of course, is that between all the blogs and, most importantly, the YouTube videos, the written format is always going to fall short as an instructional medium for some DIY endeavors, including complicated nail art. This book was published in 2013 or '14, and even then, there were plenty of excellent online tutorials for amazing manicures, so it was automatically going to be superfluous and unnecessary – I can't see how the authors or the publishers didn't realize that. To make matters worse, it fell far short of being satisfactory even for the very short repertoire of designs and techniques it includes: photographs are only used to show the final result, and all of the instructions' individual steps are illustrated with line drawings only. While these are okay (if not very attractive or exciting) for many of the processes, I cannot even imagine, for example, trying to learn how to do water marbling without a video (or at the very least, a lot of photographs).

This book is a total turkey, and a waste of money (and I hate saying that, because the authors seem very nice). If you are new to nail art, head straight to YouTube and you will be tickled pink and nearly overwhelmed by the embarrassment of riches you'll find there for learning nail art at every level of experience.

[Holliferous · Rating 3 out of 5]

well made book, the pictures are lovely. it was perhaps just a little too gaudy for me, ha.

[Melanie Coombes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book to get ideas from. My seven year old daughter loved it and dragged it to the beach to "read" every time we went. The photographs are colorful and beautiful. They make you want to try every style featured. A few a quite complex looking, but that are many that would be easy to do with just a 2 colors or so. We tried on and it came out great. Lots of fun nail art to try. Will definitely be keeping this book and trying more designs on my daughter. Now I just have to buy a white nail color to try some of the styles.
I received a complimentary copy of this through the Goodreads giveaway program.

[Tina Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nail Candy" is great on so many levels. This book gives the reader a comprehensive lesson on nail care, from which tools to have on hand and how to use them to fabulous ideas on the how to apply the most badass manicure ever.

Each page is full of color pictures. The section on nail tools shows a picture of each, and describes in detail what to look for when purchasing things for you nail kit. Step-by-step instructions for over 50 nail designs make this book a must-have for polish Divas.

I highly recommend this book for people of all ages who like pretty manis and pedis.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nail Candy by Donnie and Ginny Geer is a great book full of nail art pictures and directions.

I bought this book for my daughter and she just loved it and looked at it a lot and even used it to get ideas for nail art for herself. For real directions I think youtube is more beneficial but this is great to find ideas.

[Zuzana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though at the beginning the authors claim they hope this book will be inspirational for all its readers "whether you're a beginner or a nail art veteran", I believe the former is the target audience. Graphic-wise, Nail Candy looks amazing, I enjoy leafing through it and looking at the designs but there is nothing I had not seen before/could not come up with on my own.

[Sherri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute book with some great ideas and detailed instructions.