I’m a celebrity nail artist — I learnt at my mum’s salon

Chii’s creations are true showstoppers (Picture: SWNS)

Chii Paris only qualified as a nail artist 12 months ago – but she can already count Grammy award winning artist SZA as a client.

The fashion graduate from Uxbridge, London, learnt how to paint nails at her mum’s nail salon.

Now, she can cater to any request – she’s even done a manicure using real butterfly wings, at the request of client who is a taxidermy enthusiast.

But, if you want nails like an A-lister, it’s going to cost you. Chii charges up to £95 a set for her intricate creations, which include SpongeBob, Winne The Pooh and Nightmare Before Christmas designs, all made using sculpting gel.

And, the designs are so involved, it can take up to five hours to do a manicure.

‘I don’t actually have a favourite [design]’, says Chii.

‘I’ve been so lucky to do so many different ones. But I enjoy doing the sculptures ones the most – it’s the closest to me being an artist rather than just a nail tech.’

Chii says she looks at a picture and ‘figures it out’ (Picture: Chii Paris/SWNS)

When it comes to crafting the nail sculptures, Chii uses the nail equivalent to Play-Doh, but describes the sculpting process as ‘super last minute.’

‘I don’t really know how others work, but I’m able to just look at the picture and think I’ll be able to figure it out,’ she said.

To this day, Chii’s most unusual request included placing real butterfly wings into a design.

A festive look (Picture: Chii Paris / SWNS)

Recalling the process, which took a painstaking three and a half hours, Chii added, ‘That one was a challenge. It was great fun though and I like doing things that I haven’t done before, that was the craziest one.’

An artist at heart, Chii couldn’t resist the idea of swapping canvases for nail beds.

‘I think that’s why I leant more towards nail art,’ she said. ‘It gives me an opportunity to showcase my art.’

‘The style itself was easy to do but going from a canvas to a nail bed wasn’t easy.’

But the highlight of Chii’s career so is doing the nails of singer SZA.

She’s even done SZA’s nails (Picture: Chii Paris/SWNS)

‘She was on tour in London, and one of her dancers wanted her nails done,’ Chii said of the R&B star. ‘But then her manager messaged me 48 hours later saying that SZA herself wanted them done too.

‘I’d only been doing nails for a couple of months so it was very unexpected and more so for myself I thought maybe I was good at this,’ she added.

For the nail design itself Chii said it was all about the colour. ‘They were super block colour, 3D chrome nails,’ she said. ‘Really colourful, every nail was a different colour combo with airbrush contrasting colours.’