Espionage Cosmetics, already a favorite of geeks nationwide thanks to their fantastic makeup collections, begins a new chapter this week with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign. With a funding goal of $20,000, supporters have the opportunity to back some of the nerdiest nail art ever to grace a geek girl’s fingers. If you’re not a manicure expert and you’ve always wanted to add personality—and plenty of glitter—to your nails, these nail wraps could be what you’ve been waiting for.
Nail wraps are adhesive-backed designs that are applied to the nail, then shaped to fit. The “Nailed It” Kickstarter campaign is kicking off with 8 designs, inspired by a wide variety of unconventional muses like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cthulu, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Jaimie Cordero, owner of Espionage Cosmetics and professional make-up artist, said that the nebula nails in the campaign were influenced in part by Tyson taking umbrage with the constellations in Titanic. “We decided to do the galaxy nails. That’s a very popular thing on Pinterest right now, but it takes almost three hours to do, which is ridiculous because nobody has time for that,” said Jaimie. “We did our research and we looked at the Hubble Telescope photos, and went to the NASA web site and picked the ones that had a really cool story to them. One of them is actually known as the Pac-Man Nebula, so that’s why we picked that one. We really did a lot of research on them.”
Although mass production of the eye-catching nail art is worthy of funding on its own, Espionage Cosmetics has a much loftier goal in mind. Jaimie explains,
We built the entire company without debt, without credit cards, without loans. It’s been off the cash that we generated from conventions and comic book stores and ThinkGeek. But in order to make this a viable company where we can employ 10-15 people and that be their major source of income, we need to start making larger steps. And that takes more money, obviously.
So we decided to set up the Kickstarter. It’s basically set up like pre-orders. It’s not just people throwing money at us because we have a project. It’s people actually getting a product in—or on—their hands as it were, so that we can launch the line and kind of get it out there in the world.
Nail wraps are less time-consuming than a full manicure and can be applied by someone like me, who still considers being able to paint the nails on my right hand a major beauty accomplishment. When checking out a prototype sample of the Nailed It wraps, I took Jaimie’s advice to shape the wrap with nail clippers and fuse it to the nail with a clear topcoat. “It will actually keep them on for up to 3 weeks,” she told me.
The result is just as glittery and striking as a design done by a well-practiced hand. Even my daughter wanted in on the nail art action, so I cut and applied tiny wraps of the “octopus” design (as she called it). She loved the result.
As for the future beyond the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, Espionage Cosmetics plans to continue branching out beyond eye shadows and lip gloss. “We also want to do cosplay prosthetics, like smaller scale cosplay prosthetics that people can apply themselves,” said Jaimie.
The Nailed It Kickstarter campaign runs through September 5. Once the campaign reaches funding, additional designs will be made available as stretch goals.
