I love anything that’s a little bit different – I’m talking yellow eye shadow and neon pink lips. So I am all over beauty’s latest trend…nail art! I think adding a little bit of personality to make something stand out is a great idea. So, with this in mind, I decided to try my hand at my very own nail art. Now, this is the first time I have ever attempted something of this nature, and trust me, I am no artist…I even struggle to draw stick men! As you can see from the photos, my little flowers aren’t perfect, in fact they are wonky and uneven, but from a reasonable distance they look quite good (even if I do say so myself!) So don’t feel disheartened if whatever you decide to create doesn’t turn out like a Van Gogh masterpiece – practice makes perfect after all!
Step One:
Gather together the three colours you want to use, and find something suitable to create your art with. You can use a dotting tool, a cocktail stick or do what I did – pinch a touch screen games console stylus from your little brother! (However make sure they have one to spare – mine has about 100 spare for when he looses his next one – so I don’t feel too guilty!) I found that this worked perfectly as it is just the right size for what I wanted and picked up the right amount of polish. In this step you should also prepare you nails for your manicure, so you are ready and waiting to go for step two!
Step Two:
Get an old bit of plastic (or piece of card) and use your nail polish brush to dribble a little puddle of two of your colours on to it (think of this as your artist’s palette!) Now it’s time to paint your nails with the colour you didn’t add to your palette. The base colour of my nails here is OPI’s Pedal Faster Suzi! I think having the base colour as light, and the detail colours as vibrant as possible works best as your nail art stands out much better.
Step Three:
After your base colour is dry, pick one of the colours you dripped onto the plastic and use your tool to paint one dot in the corner of each nail. Or, you could do flowers randomly all over your nails! Then wait for this to dry. If your dots need another layer then don’t be afraid to paint away…just try to make sure you keep your hand as steady as possible. These will be the middle of your flowers. Here, I have used OPI’s My Boyfriend Scales Walls.
Step Four:
Once your little dots have dried, load your final colour onto your tool and paint four dots around the outside, here I used Butter London’s Primrose Hill Picnic. I found four dots worked well, but you could of course place dots all the way around. Once these have dried, apply a top coat to make sure your design stays on your nails for as long as possible.
If you feel like giving your own nail art a go then don’t forget to post a picture of the finished article to us on our Facebook wall so that we can all get some more inspiration!
