The How NOT To Do Spun Sugar Nails Tutorial

I have nothing to disclose.

I got a request to do a tutorial about this manicure:

 A little background info, this was my first attempt at doing spun sugar nails. I have not tried this technique at all since doing this manicure.

So, what do you need to attempt this manicure? First, you need to be a complete novice at doing the spun sugar nail technique. Second, you need to be completely impatient. Third, you need to be messy and not really give a crap if your manicure looks perfect or not.

Yep, that's about it.

No, not really. In all seriousness, I did attempt to do spun sugar nails again but it didn't quite turn out like it was supposed to so I thought I'd just take the chance to make fun of myself a bit first.

For the previous manicure, I used Jior Couture Vét Olografik as the base, LA Colors Circuit for the spun sugar and NYC Matte Me Crazy on the accent. For this manicure, I used different polishes.

Here's what you will need to complete this manicure:
1. base coat
2. nail polish, any color. This will be your background color.
3. more nail polish, you can use 1 or multiple colors for the "sugar"
4. top coat
5. acetone, nail polish remover, etc.
6. toothpicks
7. wax paper
8. a time keeping device


First, start off as usual. Apply your base coat, and your background polish. I started off with 3 coats of Sation Electrical Storm.

While you're waiting for your base to dry, take a sheet of wax paper and your other polishes and just let some polish drop onto the wax paper. Let the paint sit.
Some people say 5 minutes, others say 10. I'll get into this more in a moment.

You could also do this before you even paint your nails. For my sugar polishes, I decided to try Kleancolor Neon Purple and Neon Aqua. I can't really recommend these polishes for this technique because as you'll see, they didn't quite work right. But that's OK.

While you're waiting, you might as well apply a good top coat and let that dry for a bit.

The next part is a little tricky. After your polish has been sitting for several minutes, you need to start checking it. To do this, take your toothpick and gently try pressing it into your pool of polish. If the polish pulls away with no problems, you have to wait a bit longer. If it's too gunky, I think you've probably waited too long or you have a polish which won't work very well for this.

You know when you're on target when it starts to pull away similar to how it is shown here. You should have strands of polish which you can simply just layer over your nail. Most people seem to go for thicker, even strands. For my first manicure, I just played with it a bit until I got different thicknesses and honestly I just kind of layered it on my nail however I wanted.

I was running out of time and patience, so I just did one full nail.

As I said, the polish wasn't really working for me, so I tried dotting it on my nail and gently pulling away to create the lines. I actually did this a little bit last time as well, it just didn't work quite as well this time. So this is why I called this the "How NOT To Do Spun Sugar Nails Tutorial." Play with your polishes some and find some polishes which work well. It does take some practice but once you get the hang of it, it's kind of fun. Hopefully this gives you a good enough idea of how to do this technique?

Oh, also - for the original manicure, for the accent nail all I did differently was I applied a matte top coat over my "spun sugar" before it fully dried, so it blended the polishes a little bit.

I had a wee bit more time to play with this so I decided to try just sugar spunning the tips of my nails. Nope, didn't like this. But that's OK, now I have a good template to practise stamping my nails for another post :)