Nautical Nail Art

Hello everyone,

Earlier in the week, I was super excited because this week are going to put my brothers new sailboat "Riders on the storm" in the water for the first time!  This inspired some nautical themed nail polish.

A sailboat and anchor! I love accent nails! 

The base color for this polish is Revlon "Fashionista" It is a wonderful blue-green shade.  Not quick dry.  Revlon formulas always apply smoothly and this polish was full coverage in 2 coats. The brush for revlon polishes is easy to work with and medium thickness.  

To paint the sailboat, I started with the red bottom. I used my acrylic paints.  After painting the bottom, I made a straight line using the brown from the base of the boat to the top. 

After that, I just painted little triangles on either side of the pole with white for the sails. 

When you are done, you can go back and touch it up with any of the colors you want. I thought I painted the sail on the left a little too big, so I went in with my nail art brush and put a little more nail polish over that area. I also accidentally got some white paint on my index finger nail, and I used the regular polish to cover that up as well. 

Leopard Nail Art Tutorial

Well, I was so disappointed with how sheer Essie "Action" came out, I felt the need to do something to save this manicure.  I decided that some bright leopard spots would be just the cure.  These are super easy and super cute! See below for the tutorial.

1.  Start with a base color of your choosing.  When it is dry, take some of your acrylic paint, and paint little dots or c shapes on your nails.  I used pink.  I suppose you could use a nail art brush and some polish instead, but it will take longer to dry, and you will have a little less control over the paint than with the acrylics.

2. Next, take some black acrylic paint and paint little c shapes around the pink spots. For some of these I did c shapes on both sides, and for some I did a c shape along the bigger c and a dot on the others.

3.  If you feel that you don't have enough spots, you can go in and add a few random spots with just black.

Thats it! So simple, and such a cute way to spruce up a boring manicure, right?  Do you think you will try this?

Blueberry Jam nail

Today I went to my parents house to make jam with my mom. We made blueberry and raspberry flavors. It looks delicious and I can't wait to eat it tomorrow for breakfast.  My manicure was inspired by our blueberry jam. Enjoy! 

                                                   

Blueberries on the vine!

For this manicure I used NYC Quick Dry in Uptown as the base color on both thumbs.
The next part is the secret to doing this manicure. Instead of nail polish for the design, I actually used acrylic paint. Thats right, regular acrylic paint like you can buy in the craft store. It is safe and non-toxic. If you mess up, just wash your hands with soap and water and it comes right off! Cool right? It is actually much more opaque than regular nail polish so you only have to do one coat. It is also a lot more firm, so it will not run while you use it .

My cheepo acrylic paints that I bought at the craft store for $4

I started off by making the dark blue dots for the blueberries. I used the end of the paintbrush without bristles, and just dipped it in the darker blue paint then pushed it against the nail with different pressures to make circles of different sizes. I used the paintbrush end because my dotting tool didn't make the circles as big as I wanted them. Next, I made a smaller light blue dot inside each darker blue one. 

After that, I painted the vines. I used the darker brown paint and put some accents in with the lighter paint. Then, I used green to paint some leaves.

I used the blueberry thumb as an accent nail, and painted the other nails with Sur La Pointe Des Pedis Tip Toe polish in Navy. I got this in Old Navy last year. I think it is from the Sara Jessica Parker line. It looks black in the pictures but it is actually a really beautiful navy color. It also has great application with full coverage color in just one coat. 

I also painted my moms nails for her!

The color is Revlon Teak Rose. As usual, I used Revlon Quick Dry top and base coat.

Paint Drip Manicure

Hey everyone!

My my nail art design today was inspired by an awesome video tutorial from Juliatmll on youtube!
Click below to watch.  Above is my finished manicure.  Below are some other helpful hints on how to create this on your own.

1.  If you read my post yesterday,  I am sure that you saw the ugly white polish after one coat. It looked pretty streaky, but much better after two. Even though there were still a few streaks, I didn't paint a third white coat, because I knew I was going to paint the drips on top and I didn't want to make the polish too thick.  After I applied the colored polish, the few white streaks were not noticeable.

2. I used a nail dotting tool for the bottom of the drops.  You can see what mine looks in the picture below.  It has a nail art brush on one end, and the dotting tool on the other.  If you don't want to buy one, you can just use a pin head or bobby pin.  I got my dotting tool at Sally's Beauty Supply. It was only a few dollars.

3. To draw the lines, I actually used a thin paintbrush which I got from the craft store. It is meant for acrylics. It is long and thin, and i found that this kind of brush was easier to make straight lines with than the shorter brush on the end of my dotting tool. 

For this manicure, I used Orly French Tip in Softest White, Cover Girl Boundless Color in Candy Apple, Kiss Nail art paint in Beach Yellow, NYC In a Minute Quick Dry in East Village, and NYC In a Minute Quick Dry in High Line Green.  As usual, I used Revlon quick dry base and top coat. 

On another note, the first finger I painted was the red thumbs.  I think it looks like dripping blood. Maybe I will use part of this for a halloween manicure. Do you think it would creep out my patients?