How to deal with nail art requests
I think all nail techs have been there. You ask your client what you’re gonna do today and she pulls out a Pinterest picture and you think: ‘Fuck, how am I gonna do this?’ I’ve been there before several times and this is how I deal with nail art requests that are out of my league or right up my alley.
Step 1: Use pictures as a reference
These are some ideas clients told me and I had NO IDEA what they were talking about: ‘I want to have an upside down sort of triangle cloud.’ Babe, whut? ‘Can I please have a dot that’s not really a dot but kinda loopy but not too big and it can flow into another dot that is a bit sharper than the previous dot.’ Pictures, I need to see pictures. Oh how I wish I filmed these requests and the laughters afterwards. But I think you get the gist about how hard it can be to translate a design onto a nail if you don’t get a few pictures. I always ask my clients to bring photos HOWEVER I also always tell them that I can never translate them 100%, onto a nail. Never.
Step 2: Talk the design through
Take your time doing a nail consultation. Even if it sounds dumb as fuck, it doesn’t matter. Nail consults are important. Sometimes it happens that I had a completely different idea in mind than my client. Communication is key and here’s how I talk through a design:
I ask what we’re gonna do
Client shows pictures
I ask them what they like about the design and what they don’t like. Are there elements they want to keep?
We think about colours. Will certain colours match? How are we gonna mix some of them? It’s important to guide a client through the colours because a design can really fail if the colours don’t match.
I do a trial nail. Is this what they had in mind? If so, put it in the light baby.
Step 3: Admit your strengths and weaknesses
If a client asks me for a design that I know I can’t execute how I want to, I just tell them. Admitting your weaknesses regarding certain art (babyboom, 3D-chrome and airbrush nails are NOT my cup of tea) guarantees a good relationship between you and the client and chances are at the end of the nail session the client is happy with her nails. You’ve’ been honest about what you can and cannot do and together with your client you create a nail art style that does match. In the beginning as a nail tech I did take some nail art requests that were out of my league and I didn’t feel good about it afterwards. Most of the time it didn’t come out how I wanted to and I could see the client wasn’t very happy either. That’s why I’m always transparent about my skills.
Step 4: Tweak the design to your style
I got send a picture of some very classy flowers with the question: ‘Can you do this?’ I could do that however this wasn’t my nail art style I usually do. So I asked her if perhaps it’s okay we do something like this? And I’d send her some pictures of flowers I recently did. She agreed and I made a perfect flower design for her. I think one of the most important things as a nail artist is to know what style you like and want to do. ‘But Lauranne, if you could do the nail art design she was requesting, why didn’t you just do it?’ Because most of the time it’s not why the client found me online or why she wanted to come to me in the first place.
Step 5: As a client, always have a few extra nail art ideas
If you decide to get nail art and you’re not sure if your nail tech is able to, you can send her pictures in advance or have a few back up ideas. It happened to me before that I was really really excited about a nail art design but somehow I just couldn’t manage it to draw on a nail. Just for the sake of the sanity of your nail tech and your contentment of your nails, have a few (like one or two) extra ideas. No stress, no disappointment. The client on the pictures had two ideas, one was mushrooms and the other one eggs. I tried to do the mushroom one first but I couldn’t get it perfectly on a nail. It looked like weirdly shaped p*nises. Nobody wants that on their nails. So together, we decided to go for the egg nail art which succeeded!
