Simple Heart nail art with tutorial

 

Hey, this is a little later than I'd like to be posting but my boyf is suffering from glandular fever, jaundice and now a horrible rash so I've been looking after him/been at the hospital and doctors so I've finally had a chance to do my nails as he is starting to recover....we hope :)

Anywho Illamasqua Kink was such a pain to remove, it stained my cuticles as I was removing it boo for nasty cuticles! I put this pink Nails Inc on for something simple to cover up my stains but it ended up needing 4 coats!! It was very streaky :( I don't like the colour, it's too barbie pink :P.

As the Vday is round the corner (so it New York!!) I decided I could do a really simple mani before I take this colour off. I saw this nail art in this months Company magazine and it was created by the nail genius The Illustrated nail. Of course the models nails were a lot shorter than mine so I have adapted it to look good on my nails but it looks great on short nails!

 

 

1. You only need one base colour and either a red striper or a striping brush and red polish (you could use a nail art pen if you have one, I prefer the clean edges that a striper gives) Hope I'm spelling striper right.... ;)

2. Paint your base colour and let dry fully.

3. Using your striper (or whatever you're using) make a line from the tip in the centre to the edges of your nail, depending on how pointed you want the hearts tip to be (mine are quite sharp) will determine how far up your nail the lines go.

4. Above the two lines, on shorter nails (read normal non talon length) this should be just under the base of your nail, draw an upside down v.

5. Join your v to the two exisiting lines with a curved line on either side. Try to keep the inner side clean, it doesn't matter if the outer edge is a bit wobbly as you'll be covering it up.

6. Neaten the outer edge, making them the same thickness as the bottom lines or colour all the way to the base of your nail. You should now have really cute heart outline nails! Yay :)

 



 

 

I did two versions, the one on my ring finger is just a thicker version of the above. It looks great on short nails as it covers the whole nail rather than 3/4s, it's super cute for vday and it's quick and simple too :).

Sorry about my horrid ridges! Not even 4 coats of polish can tame them :(.

I've started to think of my NY nails.....eeeee

 

Let me know if you're going to give it a go! I'll pop these onto my tutorials page :) 

Foil nail art with tutorial

Hey everyone, I've read all your comments about what you'd like to see more of and I've listened! I'll be doing a stash post tomorrow for those who asked :) and today is some nail art with a tutorial. See I can be a good blogger :P. I'll try and get some more swatches in soon too!

So I got some nail art foils from ebay but I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with them so I've left them until now. The illustrated nail posted a picture on instagram last night and I was inspired so I have done my interpretation.
 Here is the finished look....

I like it, it's a bit of edge and a bit of understated bling ;)

Here's the tutorial in two parts, partly because I didn't like the layout available for the 7 pictures but also because I thought the foil one was kind of handy on its own if you wanted to know how to distress it :)

1. Colours used here are Barry M Black, Max Factor Intense Plum, Seche Vite and the foil.
2. In order to get a distressed look I took a scalpel, but you could use scissors or a sharp knife, although not if you use the knife for cooking as when you scrape away the surface bits of glitter get everywhere! Turn the foil over and gently scrape away the back.
3. This is what it should look like, don't worry if it looks like you've scraped away too much as when you put it over your nail the look isn't as visible.
4. Finally cut out your chosen shape, again I used my scalpel but scissors would do equally.

1. Paint your nail in the chosen colour.
2. Whilst the second coat it still wet, blob on your second colour using the polish's brush and swirl it around to slightly mix the two together. It's a kind of alternative to a smooth gradient, I like it ;).
3. You can either use topcoat or the base polish to stick the foil to your nail. Finish with a topcoat but be sure to blob it over the foil as to not smudge the colour.

Hope you like this nail look, it's something a bit different but still cool and more importantly it was quick and easy!! The quick thing is a rareity with my nail art nowadays but trust me it took hailf an hour to do all 10 fingers! Woohoo

Let me know if you try this :)

Blue swirly galaxy nail art tutorial

Hello :)
Here is the tutorial that a few of you said you'd like to see, I have made a video as it was quite hard to try to explain with just photos so it'll go photo, explaination, photo etc then a video then photos again. Quite weird but it might work ;) I didn't even realise my camera even had video capabilities! Hahah.

For my galaxy I only needed four colours; black, white, dark blue and light blue but you can use more colours if you like.

Nails Inc Chelsea, 17 Mini Skirt, Nails Inc Baker Street, Barry M Blueberry Icecream and Sally Hansen Double Duty and medium length nail art brush/paint brush a dotting tool will be needed too.  

 For each step you'll need a blob of the colour and topcoat (not fast drying!)

Step One - Paint your nails black or a suitably dark colour.

 

Step Two - Using the paint brush blob the darker colour onto your nail and spread it out using long brush strokes, don't be neat. Whilst it's still wet with the same brush dip into the topcoat and smudge the edges out.

In the video I show you the smudging method for the lighter colour which goes on top of the darker colour whilst it's still wet.

 

Step Three - blob on the lighter colour (in this case in the middle of the darker but it can be towards one side) and immediately dip into the topcoat and push the polish outwards in wispy strokes to blend into the darker colour. If you need to add some more dark and blend into the lighter colour.

Step Four - Repeat the above step with the white polish, the star is going to go over the smudged white circle.

Step Five - Add a white circle for a star once the other colours have dried.

Step Six - Finally add more smaller stars and then a top coat!

 

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I hope it was clear and usefull, don't laugh at the video too much :P. Let me know if you try this out :D

 

 

Gingham nail art and tutorial

I was meant to get this out last night but I was just too tired so here it is now!
Like I said it's very unseasonal (for us in the UK at least) but it's super cute and looks really cool :). I'll show you the finished look then I'll give the tutorial.

I figured posing with a gingham bow would work ;) my sister made that bow btw....anyway here we go...

All you need is, one white polish, two of the same colour, one lighter and one darker, I used Models Own Lilac Dream and Models Own Purple Poppy. Also you will need one nail art brush either a striper or just a medium length square edged brush and some acetone/remover to keep cleaning the brush with.           
                                                                                                                                                                                 

Step One

Paint all your nails white, two coats should do it, they don't have to be perfect as most will be covered. Then use a fast drying topcoat to ensure a smooth and dry finish.

 

Step Two

Once all nails are dry, starting at either edge of your nail with a tiny bit of nail polish on the nail art brush/striper, slowly bring the brush to the tip of your nail, go over it again if it's to thin or wobbly, you need a nice edge. Repeat across the nail, depending on the width of your nail you should be able to fit three thin stripes or two medium sized stripes. Again you'll need two coats on the stripes.

 

Step Three

Once the vertical stripes are dry, you can start to do the horizontal lines, try to make them the same width as the vertical lines and space them out so that when the lines cross they make white squares, it doesn't look as good if you have rectangles :P.

 

Step Four

Once the horizontal lines are dry, take your darker shade and dap a tiny bit onto the nail art brush/striper and where both lines meet create a square out of the darker colour, this is quite easy as the lines you've already created help keep the darker colour in a sqaure shape. I've shown you here just on the one side to show you what I mean.

 

 

Step Five

Continue making the squares on all cross points on all nails. I only did one coat as I didn't think it needed a further coat as it's a darker colour. As you see my lines and squares are not perfect but it doesn't matter.

 

Step Six

Once everything is dry seal with a very glossy topcoat and you're done. The topcoat really helps to disguise any blips and uneven polish.

 

So I hope you found this tutorial helpful, I'm sure there are other ways to do this but this is the way I did it and it was pretty easy the only difficulty was creating straight lines without a proper striping brush, the only thing is that it is very time consuming and you might get a sore back :P. My right hand turned out pretty good too, the pattern is bigger on my right hand but it still looks good :)

 

 

 Let me know if you try this! I'd love to see your results, I think it'd look so cute with a different colour on each finger :)



My guide to nail art, Part Two: Dotting Tools

Hi! I've been thinking of making this into a series of posts and if this one goes down well then I will :). I didn't even realise that today's Artsy Wedenesday challenge was dotting tools until I'd done all the designs haha. 


So todays post is all about the humble dotting tools, as with the last post this is all my own opinions and methods that I've figured out. If you don't have any dotting tools, why not? They are a couple of pounds off ebay and are easy to fix should they break like mine did. One of mine arrived broken so I simply fixed it with some blu tac, wrap it around the base of the dotter and simply push it back into the body and it will stay, et voila you can now use your once broken dotting tool :D 


There are three main sizes that I use almost every time 

You can see the blu tac sticking out of the yellow one :P. The smallest, a medium sized and the largest. The good thing about dotting tools is that you can get at least three different sized circles out of each dotter, depending on how much polish you use and how much pressure you apply. 


A method that I use when using dotting tools is the dip and drag method, you dip into a deep pool of polish and then put it to your nail and instead of dotting and pulling up, you dot and drag it along the nail. This can be used to fill in gaps of designs or draw lines (with the slimmest tool).   

This is my attempt to demonstrate the dip and drag, it'd be better as a video but I'm not ready to do a video :P. Like I explained earlier you dip in the pool of polish that you can see in the top of the paper, then you just put the dotter to paper and drag it until the polish runs out. 


I'm going to show you 8 mini tutorials, different ways to use a dotting tool, it doesn't just make circles ;). Under each of the steps with polish I've added an illustration to make it easier to see what I've done with the polish. 
First up is how to draw a moustache and panda eyes 

I hope these are pretty self explanatory, I used the largest tool for the big circles, the smallest for the lines and joining up the two different sized dots, using the dip and drag method. 

Next are flowers

Again I used the largest for the big circles on the first two flowers and the medium for smaller dots on the tulip shape, dragged the polish in a slight banana in between the two smaller dots. I prefer to do my flowers like the version two but it depends what look you're going for I guess :).

Leopard print and Butterflies

a-england Galahad, Kiko Melon, Nails Inc Chester Terrace, Kiko Dark Violet

Leopard print is one of the easiest designs to do with dotting tools as you literally can't go wrong, all you do it load your tool with polish and dot and drag around the splodge until you're happy but don't go all the way around. 

The butterfly is something I just thought of and I kind of like it, again it's simple but looks good, you don't have to leave it plain you can decorate the butterfly however you want, you don't have to do two colours either, I did to show the different shapes. 

Finally drips and hearts 

On the drip design the line of polish goes at either the tip or the base of the nail. I feel the first heart needs a little explanation, it's easy but you need to be quick. Dip and then drag in a v. If the polish runs out simply dip and drag again from the bottom of the v and that should sort it out. The second version takes a bit more effort but it looks quite cute ;). 

The thing to think about regarding dotting is to think of the circles as a means to an end, they don't have to be the final product, use the dots as a skeleton for other shapes and the possibilities are almost endless. It reminds me of when I was younger and I'd watch art attack and he'd use circles and sausage shapes to be the framework for his drawings and it's exactly the same principle with dotting tools. So get inventive! 

I hope you find this useful and maybe it inspires you to give nail art a go! If you do try any of my methods let me know, I'd love to check them out :) 

Nail art tutorial: Pandas!

So for my first nail art tutorial I decided to do something that was easy and supa kute! ;) what is cuter than pandas right? 


For this all you need is a white polish, three different sized dotting tools and black polish like so:

One tip I have is:  I found it was better to have a deep blob of polish that you are dipping into as this means that you will have excess polish on the dotting tool which means you can move the polish around and create bigger circles or straighten edges.  Also make sure you put a base coat on first :). 

Here are the simple four steps to pandas: 

1. Using the brush that comes with the white polish, start half way up the nail and do one stroke down to the tip and then starting from the same place as before curve the brush round and down and both sides to create the curved top. Don't worry if you can't make it as curved the ears help cover it up anyway :). 

2. Taking the largest dotting tool (or suitable substitute) dip it into the black polish that you have put onto paper/empty lid etc, and put one dot on the side of the curve near the skin as you can see on my ring finger. Then you may need to place another large dot to make the ear as big and cute as possible. I liked to have straightened edges at the bases of the ears as I think they look cuter than just circles. Repeat on the other side. Using the ears as guides, place two big circles just under the ears. Then with a smaller dotting tool make a smaller dot joined next to the big eye dot, and join the circles with more polish. Repeat on other eye. 

3. Once the black has completely dried, dip your medium sized dotting tool into the white polish and carefully dot the white in the middle of the big black circle only. It's this ring arond the eyes that make them cute! 

4. To finish get the smallest dotting tool and dot on two tiny black dots for eyes and then dot inbetween the eyes at the tip of your nail for a little nose. Once completely dry then you can add a top coat over your whole nail. Et voila you now have 5 cute pandas!


Of course if you have a nail art pen, the ears are easier to do but the dotting method definitely works best for the eyes as it help creates the perfect circle for eye patches. 


Here's what my whole hand looks like

:D! 

Here's me creating the curves on my other hand, it's easy once you get into it :)

I hope this was clear and helpful, let me know if you are going to try this out, I'd love to see other pandas! Eee so cute :)