Sculpted acrylic flowers: first attempt...pic heavy!

Hey everyone.

I've been trying my hand at making acrylic flowers for 3D nail art.  I know that it's possible to buy embellishments for your nails without having to do all the hard work yourself, but I wanted to try it out.  As this is my first attempt (and it's not perfection) I can't really call the rest of this post a tutorial...rather, it's a step-by-step of what I did.

I started with white acrylic powder and acrylic liquid that I bought on Ebay.

 I stuck a false nail onto a practice finger and wrapped it in cling film with the intentions of removing the flower once I had finished creating it.

 I don't have a glass dappen dish to put my acrylic liquid into (yet), so I used a lid from an old bottle of acetone I had.

 I soaked the brush in the liquid,wiped the excess off and drew it across the top of the powder to form a ball.

 I put the ball of acrylic onto the nail to start shaping it. It became quite liquified...I'm not sure that it was supposed to be so wet. Perhaps my liquid to powder ratio was a bit off.

 I pressed the tip of the brush into the acrylic.

Something that bares a slight resemblance to petals

Continue making petals in the same way...

 I tried to take flower off the clingfilm and it didn't want to budge. So I tried again with kitchen foil - much better. You can see the end result in the corner -------------------------------------^^

 This time I tried to angle the first set of petals. I then made smaller petals on top of those.

 I was able to slid the flower off the foil and can put it onto my own nail with a bit of clear polish.  Making the flowers on a fake nail will give it the curvature it needs for it to lay nicely against the nail.

Don't worry about the top two - I was messing around on this thumb nail. I actually sculpted the largest flower (or blob) straight onto my thumbnail.

In future, I will need to try to find a better liquid to powder ratio so that the acrylic is more pliable; mine was a little too wet. I think I will try to go for less layers on my flowers too. I may also try using different acrylic powder/liquids to see if that makes any difference.

Have you done this before? What have you come up with (provide your links so I can see!)
If you need details on the products I used, just send me an email/put your questions in the comments section.

Thanks for reading xx