My wife is a nail artist and we created an international nail art magazine, but I totally agree with Geeg and the other ladies. Focus on perfecting the quality and speed of your pink and whites first - that's what pays the bills and will bring customers back.
When you are skilled at both acrylic and gel, using both tips and sculpting - then is the time to develop your skills further into nail art.
As Geeg says, nail art on less than perfect nails looks horrible.
Don't be confused, as so many are, that many customers will buy nail art or it will add a valuable extra income by itself - it won't. It took Iryna 3 years to reach a point where 30% of her customers wanted some form of nail art, but by that point people were coming specifically for her nail art reputation.
Look at nail art as a marketing tool. Once you can create beautiful and reliable nails, if you then become very good at nail art then it helps you stand out from the competition and you can increase your pink and white prices (Iryna charged 25-30% more than other salons). Customers who will never buy nail art are still interested and amazed at what a skilled nail artist can do and are interested to see new designs that you make - they see you as more of a specialist - that's why you can charge more for standard services.
Bear in mind that for her to reach a level where she could attract nail art interested customers and increase her prices, not only was she educated by some of the best nail artists in Russia and Ukraine, but she also had a lot of articles published in magazines - plus we made a lot of nail art photographs for our website. It was a lot of work and investment.
Another way to stand out and be able to charge more (by attracting customers with more money who are willing to pay more) is to win pink and white competitions.
However, with nail art you can send your design and step by steps to magazines and keep your image in the press - that's not so easy if you are purely a pink and white competition winner (normally they might get a few lines in the magazine about a win, compared to a nail art article that can get two full pages). Magazines are always interested in new talent and showing something that brightens up their pages - there are only so many pink and white and nail polished nails they can put in a mag. Of course you can also add the design to your gallery - you should also add any published articles to your gallery and frame these for the salon.
To be a good nail artist, IMHO, you need good education in all disciplines (painting gel design and acrylic design) and hundreds if not thousands of hours practice. You need to be like a good interior designer and have a full palette of tools and materials to work with to create a design that suits the customer, not just do what you want and slap on a 3D rose.
There are very few schools or people who can teach good nail art in the UK or most other European countries. One person you could contact later on is Kirsty Meakin (Phn: 07891 480687) who has won several international nail art competitions and has the skills that are up there with the best Russian and Ukrainian schools.
BTW, sorry but I don't consider fimo canes to be nail art - it's nail decoration. No serious nail artist uses these, stick on transfers or anything else that requires negligible talent or skill to use. It may be fun and I don't knock that - but to call it nail art devalues the skill and dedication that's required to be a good nail artist.
