My one-on-one with Sam Biddle

I've just had two days of nail tech heaven! Learning new techniques, a great instructor and lots of nail chat!

Although I'm quite familiar with most of the fantasy techniques, each person tends to follow their own path of discovery. This means even though you might have studied a subject before, that different instructors will always give you some new information or skill. As an educator myself, it's not unusual for me to learn something from my students as well.

So for the last two days I've been here in Bournemouth on the south coast of England to spend some one-on-one time with Sam Biddle. I was especially interested to meet Sam for two reasons. Firstly, Sam has a very interesting creative approach which tends to be quite 'out of the box'. I suspect that Sams point of reference for any design is to totally avoid producing anything that's been done before which is something that I also strive to achieve. Secondly, Sam uses a different technique to create some of her fantasy figures than what I use in my work. So this was a chance to develop my own skills further in this area.

Here are some photos of the pieces that I created. Click to see a larger image:











The figure of the man is sitting on a drink straw and is about 3cm high. So you can get a perspective of the size of the pieces from this.

Creating fantasy designs is all about knowing your product and being able to control the material. All of the pieces above were created only with acrylic; it's important to be able to work quickly and precisely. I guess that's one reason why I find it so fascinating!

At the end of the two days I was happy with what I had managed to create and Sam was very positive about my results. Along the way I learnt a lot of new tips and also understood more about the difference between the materials we used and how to manipulate them to create the best result.

Thanks Sam for a wonderful time! See you in Sweden for our Nail Art Smögåsbord workshops we are making together in May! (see earlier post for information on this).

Finally, Bob and I would also like to thank Sam's husband John who drove 40 minutes to Bournemouth to join us for an evening meal. Lovely to meet you John!