Real Snake Skin from @NailsAndTrees

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Yes, this is REAL snake skin, and you can purchase your very own by clicking here! Some may think it's "creepy" (as per my best friend), but I love it! I hate snakes, but I am really loving my #RealSnakeSkinMani.

I mean, am I right!? It's totally awesome! @Sloteazzy is the one who inspired me into buying the snake skin in the first place, and I am glad I did!

Working With The Snake Skin

I won't lie, it was kinda weird at first when I thought about wearing snake skin on my nails, but after a minute or two, I got over it, and moved on. @Sloteazzy has a great tutorial for her #RealSnakeSkinMani on her Instagram page (just scroll down, its a black & red mani). I would've recorded a tutorial, but I wasn't even sure if I was going to accomplish it! It feels so incredibly fragile, like it's going to tear if I barely grab it with the tweezers. But that's not the case. Yes, it can be torn pretty easily, but it's not as fragile as you will first think.

Placing the skin on my nails was another tricky feat I came across. I'm not a pro at putting on jelly polishes, so I didn't want to put an entire layer of polish before placing the skin. So all I did was simply do a sort of "dry brush technique", just putting a little bit of the polish onto the nail, just enough to get the skin to stay in place. That worked perfectly because when I pressed the skin to the nail, there wasn't any overflow from too much polish.

Cutting it was the most difficult part of it all for me. I definitely should have precut them, but hey, it was my first time. Lol. So the pieces that I did cut were bigger than my actual nail, so I took my cuticle "nippers" to cut off the excess. Well apparently my nippers aren't as sharp as I thought they were. It was a pain to cut instead of tear the excess skin off. But don't worry, it's not the snake skins fault in the slightest. If you have a properly sharpened nipper or tiny scissors, you will be fine. The excess that was hanging off my free edge wasn't enough for me to cut, so I waited until my nails were dried after the top jelly layer, and a top coat, and I just filed the free edge a bit, and the excess fell off.

Overall

This is a wonderful product! Even though I had such a hassle with this mani, it was all on me, and my inexperience. Lol. If you are wanting to try this mani out for yourself, be sure to visit @Nailsandtrees shop, and buy some for yourself! They are very cheap, and arrive in a very timely fashion. I will probably end up buying more in the future so I can get better at these manis(; Paint on lovies!