KUT News Now

Kim Reist found a creative spark when she started experimenting with the world of fingernail art during the Covid lockdown.

The full transcript of this episode of KUT News Now is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

This Is My Thing: Nail Art!

Show theme song/opening

Michael Lee [00:00:13] I’m Michael Lee and you’re listening to This Is My Thing. You’re probably hearing this show as part of the KUT News Now podcast feed. And I am always happy to remind you that despite that fact, this show is not about the news at all. On This Is My Thing we talk to people about the things they do just for themselves. It’s not their job and it is not a responsibility. It’s just a thing that brings them joy or feeds their soul. This week: nail art!
My guest today is Kim Reist, who found a creative spark when she discovered what’s possible in the world of fingernail painting during the Covid lockdown.

Michael Lee Let’s quickly define what nail art is. This is art that is done on fingernails.

Kim Reist [00:00:50] It could be done on your fingernails. Some people do it on their natural nails. But my natural nails are very thin and very brittle and weak. They break. They don’t grow long. So my nail art is done on artificial nails that I attach to my real nails so I can take them off. I can put them in these little boxes, and then I can take them back out again and put them back on and wear them to match my clothes, as you can see, or to match my mood or whatever. And that’s that’s not something a lot of people do. A lot of people. It’s very ephemeral. They create it. And then as soon as that acetone hits it, it’s gone forever. Not for me. I get to keep mine.

Michael Lee [00:01:23] And I see right here between us on this table is what looks to be an acrylic box full of nails that have art on them.

Kim Reist [00:01:31] And this is one of about 5 or 6 boxes that I have sitting at home. So we are in my office slash nail cave.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:01:39] . So we are in my office slash nail cave.
I’ve got some press on nails that are like… they’re just nail tips and I’m going to design and do a color some color on one on a couple. So I’m going to open this up. And this is where I have a bunch of different ones. I’m going to do pull out a couple here. So these nail tips for fun fact are marketed to children. Because my nails are really small, my natural nails. So I have to have little tiny ones. All right. I’m going to come over here for a second because I need to get… so this is my filing cabinet, which is full of all my nail stuff. More nail stuff. I need this…

Michael Lee [00:02:17] I mentioned earlier that you have this case of nails. I would love it if you would kind of explore this with me and show me what’s in there.

Kim Reist [00:02:23] Okay. I’m going to show you my Star Trek nails if I can find them. I don’t know if you can see. Do you recognize that person on those nails?

Michael Lee [00:02:31] If I’m not mistaken, that’s Lieutenant Commander Data.

Kim Reist [00:02:33] Data. But hold on. Let me just show you what I got here for you. This is… this is a Fistful of Datas. Get it? Yeah, I’d take that part out too. That’s like the dad joke beyond all bad jokes.

Michael Lee [00:02:48] Okay. Real quick sidebar here for folks who aren’t as deeply into Star Trek as Kim. ‘A Fistful of Datas’ is the title of episode eight, season six of The Next Generation. And five fingernails, all with pictures of Data on them, equals one fistful of Datas. You can check that math. Okay, back to the show.

Kim Reist [00:03:06] But then like this one, if you want to look at it, if you look closely at it, that’s an example of nail stamping. So it’s just a gray paint. And then I have this metal plate that’s got that coffee cup etched and that swirl that’s coming out of it. And I just use a color to pick it up and then stamp it down right on top of it. Now I’m really nerding out because I’m showing you all my nails here. So these are some other ones with just other designs on them. I don’t know. It’s just a real mix. I have a lot of abstract stuff.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:03:34] …and I’m going to take this nail tip and I just need to kind of clean up the edges because sometimes they have these little pokey bits and then I’m going to stick it right on top of this nail, this little stand. It’s like a magnetic stand because you can’t really hold it and paint it at the same time.

Michael Lee [00:03:51] Radio is an audio medium. Podcasts are an audio medium, right? So for folks who are just hearing this, describe the nails you’re wearing right now and why you’re wearing those nails.

Kim Reist [00:04:00] Okay, So these nails are have a base coat. All the nailies out there are going to do exactly what I’m talking about. These nails have a base coat of gray polish, just regular nail polish because there’s a couple of different kinds of polish and then they have a topper or a top coat of something called crackle nail polish, which was a really popular about ten years ago. And it’s coming back, I guess if you’re in the nail thing, when you put it over the base coat, it dries and when it dries, it cracks and it never does it exactly the same on each nail. So it just looks really cool. I don’t like it. And I really, really, really love it.

Michael Lee [00:04:35] Sort of back up a little bit. One of the things that I heard in that answer was the word ‘nailies.’

Kim Reist [00:04:41] Nailies.

Michael Lee [00:04:41] Is this… I’m delighted to hear this. Is this…

Kim Reist [00:04:44] Is it an official…

Michael Lee [00:04:45] Official term? Is this what you all call yourselves and each other?

Kim Reist [00:04:48] I don’t know if there’s an official term. I belong to. A number of Facebook groups obviously always belong to a number of Facebook groups. When you have a hobby and I don’t really did I see it from there? I don’t know if I picked it up from there for just kind of came out of my own brain. But nailies are my term for people that are into nail art and really into doing their nails to polish.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:05:06] Well, that’s curing. Let me think about what I could do with some stickers on it. I’ve got this magnetic gel that will make it look all sparkly and really cool. Maybe I’ll do that. I could do additional painting on it if I want to. If I put a matte surface on it, I can get watercolors out and do watercolor designs on it, which I’ve done.

Michael Lee [00:05:23] Growing up, did you always paint your nails, paint interesting things on your nails?

Kim Reist [00:05:27] No. I mean, I grew up in the 70s. I’m 59. I’m going to be 60 in a couple of days. So, you know, when I was a kid.

Michael Lee Congratulations.

Kim Reist Thank you. I guess I.

Michael Lee [00:05:34] Is that the right thing to say.

Kim Reist [00:05:37] Maybe so. I grew up playing with nail polish and regular nail polish, and I thought that was fun. And I’ve gone through periods where I didn’t do anything with my nails. And then when I was an adult and I had my own discretionary income, I used to pay someone to put an artificial nail on. When the pandemic hit, I couldn’t go do that, obviously. And so I really didn’t actually think about it for a long time. And then I don’t, I, I maybe I saw in HB you know, there are press on nails. That’s what I’m talking about, that I create a press on nails. And I think that some of the big brands put them out in the store. Maybe that’s where I stumbled across them and I was like, my God, I can just put this on temporarily and have cool nails. So I kind of got into it that way, and then I got on Etsy and Etsy. There are a lot of people selling nails on Etsy. Some amazing, unbelievable stuff out there. So I purchased some of that and I remember thinking, I could never do this for myself. And then then I just was like, Well, maybe I can. So I started playing around with it and just really, really well, I mean, I really got into it. It’s kind of ridiculous the amount of getting into it that I got into with. So it’s like you start out with a $10 set of acrylic paints from Target, and then a year later, you know, you’re spending $100 so you can get free shipping from South Korea. Something like that.

Michael Lee [00:06:55] Is at the stage you’re at?

Kim Reist [00:06:56] Now. Yeah, Yeah. So I have been at that stage and right now I’ve gone on to nail art moratoriums, which means I don’t let myself buy anything.

Michael Lee [00:07:03] There’s something I think that can happen with a lot of hobbies. Buying the gear can be incredibly fun, but it can also become a hobby unto itself.

Kim Reist [00:07:12] Exactly.

Michael Lee [00:07:13] Do you do you it sounds like you have.

Kim Reist [00:07:15] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I absolutely have. I definitely have. And I’ll I’ll see something. I’m like, I need to get that and I get it. And I don’t really have an immediate use for it, but I’m just like tucking it away kind of a thing. And, you know, I, I give away stuff I’m not using. There are, there are unspoken Nellies on my buying nothing group on Facebook. So I just put out a post and say, you know, please take this and they’ll they’ll take it off my hands. But, you know, I sometimes fret about the, the finance involved so.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:07:43] …actually this is office supplies. That’s office supplies. I move some stuff around this. I used to be in there, but I ran out of room. I can…

Michael Lee [00:07:48] So we talked a little bit about your nail experience as a younger person.. What about your art experience as a younger person? Did you grow up doing art?

Kim Reist [00:07:56] I didn’t do art all the time, but my mother is an artist. She was an easel painter in the 70s and she had a glass studio and did her own glass. And so I was really I grew up surrounded by artistic pursuits and an artistic attitude, but I’ve never considered myself an artist when I was growing up at all.

Michael Lee [00:08:13] Do you now?

Kim Reist [00:08:15] No. I still think of myself as a hobbyist, and I’m not even really even chasing after that. I feel like whatever, you know, that’s for someone else to decide, right? Sure. I don’t really think it’s for me to decide.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:08:24] Art, inks. And I have. Gosh. Well, there’s just a number of different things, just all the different kinds of embellishments you can put on to a nail.

Kim Reist [00:08:31] One of the things that I’ve been trying to get better at is brush skills, and I’ve actually even taken a couple of art classes online to get better at painting, to understand color balances better and creating designs or cool film.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:08:46] Let’s do that. We’ll do some film. All right.

Kim Reist [00:08:50] On Instagram, I follow a number of Japanese nail artists, and there’s a big flex for Japanese nail artists where they’ll, like, just casually reproduce a Renaissance master painting on a thumb. You know what I mean? Like, you look down, it starts off. It just looks like a nail. And then when they’re done, it’s like The Girl in the Pearl Earring or something. It’s just like, wow. And these are people that are genuinely artists that are working in this medium, I guess you’d call it, and doing beautiful designs and gorgeous work. You know, I’m always on the cusp of and this may be something that all creative people struggle with, and I don’t consider myself a creative artists, but I am a hobbyist. Is can I do that? I want to do that. I want to get good enough to do that. You know what I mean? And then working and all the practice you do and trying to get better at it and getting inspired by other people, but trying not to copy them. You want to do your own thing, but that whole, that whole thing, that very complicated thing, that tussle with your creativity for me is actually part of the appeal. I think it’s really great. I really enjoy it. Even though I go through periods where I’m like, Terrible, why am I doing this? But then I do a set of nails and I’m like, These are so good, so excited, and I’m back in. Basically.

Michael Lee [00:10:06] When you’re painting them and working on them, are you able to sort of like shut everything else out and it’s just about you in the nail right now?

Kim Reist [00:10:13] Yeah, absolutely. I usually get up at 5:30 most mornings, 6:00, and that’s like perfect for me. I really that’s my best time to learn anything. And I usually do a lot of nail art first thing in the morning and my husband sleeping in the room. I’ll come into my little space and just start playing around with it that time of day. And that thing started. The emails haven’t started. I can just focus and just completely zone in on it and it feels really, really good foil.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:10:39] Let me put take some of this out here. This is just a thin, thin plastic with a design. You can attach this to the nail. It’s kind of a hologram effect on the nail. We’ll see how this goes.

Kim Reist [00:10:52] But this, I think, is just another avenue for people to express themselves. I don’t know how to describe it, but when you’re doing something you really love like that, I don’t know how to explain how it just really kind of feeds you in a way, you know what I mean? It just I need a cool way of saying that, but that’s really what it is.

Michael Lee [00:11:08] I mean, that’s kind of a question that I always ask people. What is this doing for your heart? For your soul?

Kim Reist [00:11:13] Yeah.

Michael Lee [00:11:13] That you’re not getting from other places.

Kim Reist [00:11:15] So I think on a surface level, if I do a set of nails that I really love, it’s just sheer pleasure at a me executing what I wanted to execute. Or sometimes I just surprised myself, like I’m just playing around with stuff. What does this look like? What is it? my God, that looks so cool. And then I have to write it down and I and now I’m going to do a whole set of nails on that. And there’s just like I said, there’s just a, a real pleasure at seeing something that you love visually that came out of your efforts.

Michael Lee [00:11:43] You know, it occurs to me one of the things about this as an artistic or creative endeavor is that you’re literally carrying it around with you. You can just like throughout the day, just kind of look down and notice…

Kim Reist [00:11:53] My God, it’s like a dopamine hit. I mean, literally, it’s just like it just feels really, really good. It just makes me feel good to look down and see them and and and be happy and, you know, yeah, it takes me right back to that moment where I was creating them. And I’m so pleased with the way that they turned out.

Kim in her home ofice/nail cave [00:12:14] Yeah. Yeah. Cool. It’s so cool. I just get excited every time I do stuff like this. Even a dumb little thing like that. I’m just like, ‘It’s so cool!’

Michael Lee [00:12:23] Thanks for listening to This Is My Thing. I’m Michael Lee and I produce the show. Special thanks, of course, to Kim Reist for sharing her love of fingernail art with us. If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch a video of Kim at work in her home office slash nail cave on our show page at KUT.org. We’ve got more This Is My Thing coming soon. We’ve been forward promoting the bike polo episode forever, and it is scheduled to be our next show! We are also working on pieces about glassblowing, pole dancing and barbershop quartet. So there are some pretty fun stuff coming up. Keep listening to hear those stories and more. If you’d like to tell us about your thing and maybe be a part of a future episode of the show, that’s pretty easy. Just go to the This Is My Thing show page at KUT.org. You’ll find a form on that page that you can fill out to tell us about your thing. And if you’re having all kinds of fun filling out forms on our website, there’s another one you can check out on the KUT.org website. There is also a form you can fill out to become a member of the station. Our members make this and everything we do possible.

This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.