I am so excited to be making this video. I thought for a little new year crafty kind of project, I would show you how to get Neko Atsume nails! So, Neko Atsume is this app, and this video isn't sponsored by the way! And it's super popular, and I've been playing it and I've been obsessed with it, like so many other people. It's a really laid back, easy going game, and basically, Neko Atsume means kitty collector. And all you do in the game, is you kind of, put out food, and check back, and see cats will come in your garden, and you take pictures of them, and put them in your album. That's like all there is to it! But it's really fun, it's really fun that there's like such a big community around it, and I thought I would combine this with a tutorial that I've been meaning to make for a while.
Which is, how to make water decal nail art, or more simply put, how to print stuff off your computer and put it on your nails! Which means that, finally, now at last, you don't have to be good at freehand art with a paint brush, you can literally just be taking pictures off google images, put them on your nails, and they'll look so cool!!.
I'm obsessed with this method, it is seriously like changing my nail art life. and it's really easy to do as well! So I'm just going to talk you through how I did mine. So the first step was going on google images and getting all of the pictures of the kitty cats that I wanted to put on my nails, i just did this by searching google, and then searching neko atsume wiki page, and just saving some fun pictures and some fan art that i found. What i then did was i opned up photoshop, you dont hav eto use phtoshop its just what i tend to use and what i know the best. the gimp is a good free alternative which i used for many years as well. so you can pretty much do anutyhing you need to do in photoshop in the gimp. now what i did next was i measured my fingernails now to do this i kind of just went with a ruler and estimated how wide the widest nail was, and how long the longest nail was. and then i kind of just put a few extra cms on there for like extra damages, kinda thing, and then when i went into photoshop i made a document which was a4 paper size, so everything would be in proportion. and then i went onto the little selection tool and i set out a square which was going to be exactly this big. i think it was maybe 1.5cm by 2cm something like that. and then i just made loads and loads of them so id have extra choice if i messed up any of the nails.
And there we have a kind of basic guide! so from there, i then started dragging my pictures in and resizing them to fit. for all of my images as well i decided to do this kind of nice polkadot green background so i just kind of put that in all the gaps. once i was happy with how everything looked, i simply printed off a test piece of paper, this was just for the sizing, because obviously you dont wan tto use your sepcial paper up! so when i printed it out i could hopld up my fingers to the images and see if they needed to be bigger or smaller.. and then when i went back into photoshop i could guesstimate how bigger or smaller i needed to make them, and in the end, on my sheet of paper, i printed out three copies of all of the images i selected.
There was like a big set, a medium set, and a small set, so they could all fit the different proportions on each of my different sized nails. so, then what you're gonna do is you're gonna load up your printer with your special transfer paper, it's called waterslide decal paper, i got mine off ebay, it was pretty cheap considering how big your nails are and how big a sheet of a4 paper is. you can really get a lot of designs out of just 1 sheet of paper let alone 5. you can get either white or clear i would always recommedn getting the clear stuff. simply because you can paind your nails whith a white base coat and the white will show thorugh there rather than having to really really definely cut your nail shape out of white and then having to clean up all of th white spaces, it's gonna be kind of difficult so id definitley recommend just gettig white poilish and clear paper. make sure youre printing onot the shiny side, check which side your printer prints out onto if you dont wanna waste your ink. when you print out, also make sure youre printging on the best seetting, which has the most dpi, because youre doing something at such a fine detail, that youre gonna want them to look really hight quality when theyre on your nails so make sure youre printing for the ebets resolution you can.
Once your decals come out wait for your ink to dry and then what youre gonna wnna do is youre gonna take okay so you can get this clear gloss varnish spray i think its like £5 at DIY stores, i dont really wnana get that or bother with that, so instead hwat i did was i took some clear nail polish and i simply took a big brush becayse i waas doing such a wide surface area, and i just opainted a thinlayer over all of my decals. you cannot skip this step if you dont pu tthe gloss on it when you put your decals into water the design is just gonna disintergrate. thats what happened to midne when i tried it withou the glos! so you have to put some kind of clear gloss on it, if you have the gloss spray use that that's what they recommend, but clear nail polish does work fine so you can use that as well.
Whilst you're waiting for all that to try, just paint your nails a simple white colour. depending on how much of your design is white showing through, maybe do two coats, but if you can get away with one coat so it's vaguely white behind it then just do that. so now it is time to put your designs on your fingernails. so all you're gonna need to do is you're gonna cut all of your designs up into small pieces so they're all separate and then you're just gonna trim them to size to fit your nail. the less clean up you have to do, the better, so the better than it fits to your nail before it goes on it that's the best. now what you'll need is a little pot of water, just tap water is fine, and some tweezers, or you can use your fingers but tweezers really helped me so i'd probably recommend using tweezers. then you're gonna need some q tips and acetone, and also some clear topcoat.
I avoided using quick dry topcoats for any of this purely because quickdry ones have got shrinkage and that can kind of mess up your designs so when you're using this kind of stuff i would just stick to a regular topcoat. so what you'll do is you will take one of your decals, make sure that your fingernail is fully dry, the bottom coat underneath is fully dry, and you'll pick it up with your tweezers, put it in the water and hold it for 20 seconds. and then pull it out, and take it between your finger and your thumb and simply slide it and it should come away from the white backing paper. it should be a clear little film of nail polish. and what you're gonna wanna do it you're gonna wanna gently dry it off with maybe a kitchen towel or my skin i just used. and then what i did was i placed it on my nail and you can move it around and position it for white a while it's not gonna stick until you put your clear topcoat on the top of it when it's in position.
You're just gonna paint a thin layer of topcoat on your design and when its kinda dries a little bit you can file off the free edge and then what i did for the rest of it was i took a q tip and some acetone and i just started kind of pulling away from the sides to get rid of all the excess desing. you're just gonna wanna carry on doing that for all of your nails and eventually you'll be done! and seriously like they look so effective so cool i am in love with how these nails turned out. it's probably my favourite way of doing my nails at the moment. i love how the neko atsume cats turned out i hope you learned a new nail art skill as well it's super easy don't be put off. you can buy premade designs of waterslide decals but honestly just get the paper and make your own you can make things which are really really important and special to you and put them on your nails! if you have maybe a favourite popstar you can put their face on it you can put literally anything on your nails!! so good! so there we go i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please make sure to subscribe to my channel give the video a thumbs up maybe if you wanna follow me on my social media all that kinda stuff! thank you so much for watching and i look forward to seeing you in my next video!
