Nail Polish Flowers

In search of a craft that could use my excess of nail polish, I have come across these cute flowers. These flowers can be used to decorate items you already own, or can create new items.

What you need is:

Floral wire (and wire cutters)

A pencil or a similar tool to shape the wire

Nail Polish (it really doesn't matter what kind)

Foam or Clay so your flowers can safely dry

A ventilated area - nail polish stinks

Cut a length of wire approximately 15 cm long. Try to keep the wire straight without too many kinks.

With the aid of a pencil or some other tool, form 5 petals. Wrap the wire around the centre after forming each petal. Make sure you leave a tail of wire so you can stick the end in a piece of foam or clay to dry.

Starting with the inner edge of one petal, paint on some polish. Add a bit more polish and "paint in" the centre. Essentially it will create a film just like what you see with a bubble wand. Fill in each section with polish.

Some nail polish is thinner that others. I find that a semi-transparent (a thin polish) doesn't work so well unless you start off with a more thicker polish.

Once you have the petals filled in, stick the flower in clay or foam to allow it to dry. You can add a centre to the flower in another colour if you wish. You could also add a second layer if you want, but it's usually fine with one coat. If you wanted to add a clear glitter layer, you could do that too. Let it sit a while to dry.

After leaving them to dry (I usually wait until the next day... just to be sure), cut the stem part off.

Don't they look cute? If you have no idea what to do with these, the next few steps will hopefully give you some inspiration.

Grab some glue (I am using E6000) and glue the flowers on. I also added some leaves with a permanent marker.

Or go nuts and glue them everywhere.

Using some ribbon, a hair clip, and craft glue, you can make some cute hair accessories.

Why not use this process with other wire wrapped projects? These "Tree of Life" pendents have sections coloured in with nail polish.