· By katie masters
THE ONLY 3 NAIL ART BRUSHES YOU REALLY NEED
If you don’t know me, hi nice to meet you! I’m Katie Masters aka @nailthoughts on instagram. I am a nail artist of 6 years with a private salon located in Santa Monica, CA.
TL;DR
4. Here is the kit of all three of these brushes to finally make nail art simple for yourself.
One of the most popular questions I receive after any tutorial I put out is “what brush do you use?” or “what brushes do I need as a beginner”? , and “what’s your favorite brush for ____ design?” .
And the problem I would see with so many brands was how confusing they made brushes. I would scroll through all of their pages and pages of brushes, each brush for a different design and as a new nail tech I was SO overwhelmed like “well sh*t , am I supposed to have ALL of these???”
The brush market literally made me feel like I wouldn’t be able to keep up if I didn’t have every. single. brush. And as a new tech it was way too complicated for me to even start to dive into.
So I became very stubborn and devoted to making a point to figure out any design/style by only using very minimal supplies, because I just KNEW somehow that whatever design I was trying could be simplified if I really broke it down enough .
I didn't want to give in to the pressure of constantly needing to buy all the new things. I truly just wanted to debunk all of the complicated art myths and keep things as simple as possible for me and everyone else.
And fast forward a few years or so, I came up with an idea to create a super simple and effective brush kit based on the three shapes of my brushes I used 24/7. I collaborated with the popular Japanese gel brand Kokoist, and my Application, Smoosh, and Detailer brush were born *cry*.
So to spare you on such a super long blog post, LET ME JUST DIVE INTO THE TOUR OF THESE BRUSHES!
I truly wanted to create this to hopefully give you all that mental freedom from thinking everything is more complicated than it really is. I want you to realize how much you really can do as an artist with just three simple brushes.
APPLICATION BRUSH
Literally for your potted gel application. Boom. Easy. But also! Why not brush strokes? Why not big swooshes across the nails? Why not ombres? Literally the world is your oyster. It’s not just a one job brush. Remember, no rules! Like look at this super cute cotton candy watercolor design I did with the Application brush!
This brush makes gel application so smooth. The firmness has just enough give to it that it’s not streaking your gel, it’s just floating it on. UGH SKDJFNSKJDNF. I may be biased but I don’t know…it’s pretty ridiculous.
Pictured: Application brush head. Imagine if a super round brush and a super flat pointy cornered square brush had a baby together. This application brush is their baby. Rounded corners to help with the corners of the cuticle area and plenty of squared off surface area to get that great first swipe coverage.
SOME REVIEWS OF THE APPLICATION BRUSH:
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SMOOSH BRUSH
Dude. I am so beyond proud of this one. Let me tell you why. In my whole effort to try to relieve nail techs of their stress behind figuring designs out, I would break down every. single. design. Into the most simple descriptions. Like smooshes.
SO many intricate looking designs are literally just smooshing your brush around the nails. Whether you are smooshing your marble lines to blend them, smooshing blobs of color into other colors, abstract smooshes to fill in some color. SMOOSH IS WHATEVER YOU NEED IT TO BE. It will always have your back and can do so much for you.
Pictured: Smoosh Brush! Think of this one as a way more rounded out version of the Application brush, but TINY. It's so great for smooshing details into smaller sections, smearing and smooshing lines...THIS is the brush responsible for all of my marble lines!
Here is a quick vid of me using my smoosh, then to my detailer, and straight into my smoosh again for some beautiful rose quartz press ons:
Here is another great tutorial I did to show you how to use it for some super cute peach nails!
SOME REVIEWS OF THE SMOOSH BRUSH
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DETAILER
This. This is the cherry on top. Maybe you do your abstract smooshes, maybe your smooshes were in the shape of a flower, or a fruit, and it’s not ~quite~ detailed enough yet. This is where your detailer comes in to save the day. I use black outlines and dots as such a crutch, I admit, but HEY, THEY MAKE SUCH A BIG DIFFERENCE.
This brush even won the Nail Pro 2020 Reader's Choice Award omg.
Pictured: My detailer brush! I use this brush for all KINDS of things. I use it for lines, I use it for dots, I use it to create abstract drippy effects, literally anything!
It has such a great firmness level to help keep control when you are doing some fine lines and is a brush you can't live without especially if you are just starting your nail art journey.
SOME REVIEWS OF THE DETAILER
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And that's all she wrote! Here is the link to my brush kit and ordering from the Kokoist website, you can always use my code NT10 for that extra 10% to save yourself some money as well.
I seriously hope you enjoy them and find simplicity in your art and find that freedom from rules that I did. That was the goal of this kit, and I just know these will make you so proud and happy with your art!!! Send me all the pictures and videos the designs you created with these. I WILL HYPE YOU UP ALWAYS.
If you have ANY QUESTIONS, feel free to reach out to me via IG.
Have a great rest of the day and I wish you all the best of the best.
xo,
Katie