Welcome to Spring everyone! I'm not sure about the rest of the world but Spring has definitely sprung out here in sunny California. I've been drooling for weeks over so many of the awesome Spring inspired brightly colored ladylike nail tutorials that have swarmed Pinterest and Youtube. Those sites make it look so deceptively easy sometimes that I just wanted to try it myself and see just if it was a simple as they make it look. I photographed as I went so that I could share what worked with all of you. So let's get started.
Here are the tools I gathered. Nothing special or professional here. Everyone probably has these things lying around there house. I used two nail polish colors (
Essie Butler Please and
Blanc),
Essie top and base coats, cuticle stick (or a toothpick), Q-tips, scissors, tweezers,
freezer bag, and polish remover.
I started off with a base coat and two coats of
Butler Please. I love this color, it's such a beautiful cobalt blue that is great on its own and reminds me of a bright blue sky. Perfect Spring color if you ask me.
My first design was inspired by a great little nail tutorial I saw on
Youtube by Bubzbeauty who does awesome hair/makeup tutorials. I altered her design a little bit to make it look more like lace. To make the frilly shape start with one stripe of polish (I'm using
Blanc) on one side of your nail. Then do a second shorter stripe right next to first followed by a third even shorter stripe next to that one. Make sure to keep the tops rounded and carefully fill in the color with a second coat if it's not opaque already.
To make it look more like lace go back in with your base color with a toothpick as your dotting tool and make three dots corresponding to each little hump you made in the white polish. Then making slightly smaller dots place one between each of the larger dots kind of corresponding to the points each time instead of the humps. Finally finish off with a few more small dots in line ...is that making sense? If not hopefully the pictures help :D
Ok so on to the next technique I've seen do several ways on Pinterest. It's the freezer bag technique. basically all you do is either paint your shapes onto a freezer bag or just paint a square of solid color on the bag and then cut out your shapes once the polish is dry. I opted for the second route. I will note too that you definitely should use a freezer bag not just a regular sandwich bag. The thicker plastic makes it easier to peel of your dried polish. After painting your initial swatch on the bag make sure you wait until it dries completely before trying to peel it off. It also helped that I used the cuticle pusher end of my orange stick to get under the edges of the polish and then used the tweezers to peel it all the way off. Also if you have smaller scissors use those instead of these gigantic ones like I used. They were cumbersome to work with. If you have those cool shaped hole punchers those are supposed to work pretty well too. I'll have to give those a try in the future. The way I made my heart in case your interested is I started off cutting out a diamond shape and then I cut V-shape into one of the corners making a sort of sqaured off heart shape (see photo). To finish it off I just carefully snipped away at the sharp edges to make it look more rounded. It wasn't too hard but the polish is very flimsy and easy to tear, hold it with the tweezers as much as you can too because oils from your fingers will prevent it from sticking to your nail later and will cause bubbles.
Here I am applying the heart to one of my fingers. I found it helps the polish stick if you have a layer of top coat between the sticker and the base polish. Resist the urge to press the sticker to you nail with your finger because again the oils from your finger will cause bubbling when you go to put your top coat on. Instead your your toothpick or cuticle stick to gently press the sticker down. Once you like the placement seal everything with a top coat, if you notice any edges coming up ever so gently use your toothpick again while the top coat is still pretty wet to nudge the edges down.
Now the I had meant to have a heart on each hand but I messed it up by bumping it on something while the top coat was drying and smudged it hell. So instead I thought I'd try making those cute dot flowers. I also wanted to challenge myself and give you guys the photographic evidence that this stuff can we done with your less dominant hand (LDH)! It's not that bad if you are careful and have your hands anchored to the table or you work surface. Another tip on doing fine work with your less dominate hand is to keep your less dominant hand steady and rested on a surface and instead focus on moving your dominant hand to create the design. It's not as hard as it sounds I promise! With anything practice makes perfect.
Here I'm just taking my Q-tip and some acetone polish remover to clean up my messy edges. I wanted try the lotion trick where you apply lotion to your cuticles around the nail so that polish wont stick but it wasn't as easy as it sounds since you have to keep the nail clean for the polish. This way was just easier for me.
All finished after sealing everything off with a good top coat. I love how fun these turned out! I usually wait until I have a leisure day to do this kind of stuff. A day when I want to catch up on my various TV series. I find it helps the waiting time go a lot quicker. Between each step I would sit back and watch an episode of Vampire Diaries or some other cheeseball show on Netflix while I waited for nails to dry. I would not do this in a hurry or if I didn't have a few hours to spend on it. Also invest in good top and base coats, don't let your hard work go to waste.
Essie makes great top and base coats. And pull the top coat all the way over the edge of your nail to prevent chipping and even if its a fast-dry top coat really give it at least a good hour to set (or an episode of Mad Men) before doing things.
So that's it! I hope I'm not leaving anything out. Let me know if you have questions, tips, or suggestions. I'd love to try new techniques.
Please share and let's be friends! See ya later!
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