Watermelon nail art

Hey guys! Today I want to show you one of the first few nail art designs that I started out doing - watermelon nails!! They're really easy to do and you don't even need any proper tools. When I just started out, I had no tools whatsoever, not even an orange stick. My only tools back then were skewer sticks and toothpicks so you can totally make do with those if you have them.

This is not my first attempt at watermelon nails, #357 would sound about right. Just kidding. This is possibly my 6/7th time doing these nails. They are so fun to do and if you mess up, well, keep on trying.

I only have 2 decent pictures (yes, I'm a great photographer):

Taken with flash

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

I used Love & Beauty - Red, Sally Hansen - Lickety Split Lime, China Glaze - White on White and a black nail art pen.

I may or may not have tried to cover some booboos that I made on my nails, hehe. 

So you want to know how I did these nails?

Okay, first I painted two coats of red polish and waited for them to dry. Then I taped about half an inch from the tip and painted one thick coat of Lickety Split Lime and peeled the tape off quickly. Using a striper brush and White on White, I created that white line between the red and green polish. Finally, I used a large dotting tool to create the watermelon seeds.

I might have been over-enthusiastic when dotting on the seeds which is why they turned out bigger than I intended them to be. >< My lines are uneven but I'm proud of all my nail art imperfections and you should be too. Perfect? Pfft, ain't nobody got time for that ;)

Have you done watermelon nails before? Did you like how they turned out? Would you try doing watermelon nails if you've never done them before? Who likes watermelons in general? I know I do.

Thanks for reading! You are awesome!

Jane Porter from Tarzan nail art (with tutorial, sort of)

After my mermaid nails, I didn't think I could ever do nails that I love more. I was wrong, at least partially. Today I delved fearlessly into the messy world of painting to draw Jane Porter from Tarzan on my nail.

Jane is a total sweetheart. Who could hate her? She's a little bit careless, adventurous, compassionate and she likes to read. Oh, and she's got gorgeous hair! A Disney girl after my own heart.

Image from Google

I totally meant to do Lego nails and I already knew what I was going to paint but at the last minute I changed my mind and did this instead. I have always loved Tarzan and I feel that nobody ever gets too old for Disney. Here's a little tidbit about me: there are usually always scenes in Disney movies that make me bawl like a baby and Tarzan is no exception haha!

Anyway on to the nails (this is a picture heavy post but that depends on what you call picture heavy). To make it easier to understand, this is how it's going to be - I'm going to show you the first design then tell you how I did it then move on to the other nails and talk about how I did them.

Taken indoors (Brush 1)

Taken indoors (Brush 2)

These are the two brushes that I used for all the designs. I didn't use any other brushes. Let's name them Brush 1 and Brush 2 accordingly.

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

The finished product:

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

 How I drew Jane:

1. I painted one coat of Love & Beauty - pale blue (it is a one-coater and I didn't want the base to be too thick) and waited for it to dry.
2. I used Brush 1 and Love & Beauty - milky white to do a basic outline of Jane's face. You can see that it was a patchy shape and I didn't bother to cover up the holes. That's because...
3. I mixed China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss and Love & Beauty - milky white to get a close-enough skin tone for Jane. After mixing, I used Brush 1 again to go over the face shape, this time making sure to cover any blank patches.
4. Next, I used Brush 2 to create the outline of Jane's hair and filled it in with The Face Shop - BR802.
5. Using Brush 2, I used The Face Shop - BR802 to draw the eyebrows.
6. Then I used Orly - Liquid Vinyl, China Glaze - White on White, and a mixture of The Face Shop - BL602 and China Glaze - First Mate to draw the eyes. I used a random pale pink polish for her eyeshadow.
7. As you can see in the picture above, Jane's mouth turned out okay but I messed up her nose a little. It wasn't as near left as it should have been and it was too dark. What I did to correct this was cover it up with the skin tone color.
8. After I covered the mistake, I used China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss to draw the nose again. It still wasn't quite right but I couldn't afford to redo it because my eyes were getting tired.
9. I used The Face Shop - (I'll fill this in when I have time to check the polish's code) to outline the lips and China Glaze - White on White to draw the teeth (well, if you can see them).
10. I totally forgot about the neck (the blank blue space in the picture above) so I had to remix the colors to paint the neck and used Love & Beauty - milky white to draw the collar of her dress.
11. Sealed the design with Seche Vite and I was good to go... Yeaaah, the process took an hour... ~_~

I hope you got all that. I'm still trying to perfect the art of writing nail tutorials but I hope the pictures help. :S If you didn't get any part, you can always ask me to rephrase my explanation. And if you have any tips on how to improve my tutorial, please tell me. I don't want you to read this and be like, pshhh that was rubbish and never come back because you think I'm rubbish. :(

Taken indoors (index finger)

Taken indoors (middle finger)

Taken indoors (ring finger)

Taken with flash

From left to right: The top half of Jane's dress, bamboo shoots, the bouquet of flowers Tarzan handed to Jane, and the hem of her dress.

How I did the rest of my nails:

• Index finger:

1. I used The Face Shop - YL702 to draw the V-shape starting 1/4 inch from the top of my nail.
2. I used a white nail art pen to draw the collar.
3. Using Brush 1 and Orly - Charged Up, I drew the little tie.

• Middle finger:

1. I used Sally Hansen - Lickety Split Lime as my base.
2. Using Brush 2 and Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint, I drew the lines of the bamboo shoots.

• Ring finger:

1.  2 coats of China Glaze - White on White as the base.
2. Using Brush 2 and Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint, I drew the stems of the flowers.
3. I used Orly - Charged Up, The Face Shop - PP401 and The Face Shop - YL702 to draw the flowers.

• Little finger: 

1. I used 2 coats of The Face Shop - YL702 as the base.
2. Then I used a white nail art pen to draw on the hem.

Sealed everything off with Sally Hansen - Insta Dri Top Coat (surprisingly there wasn't any bubbling!)

Taken with flash

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

Taken in natural sunlight

Taken in natural sunlight

Collage

Image from disneyyandmore.tumblr.com

This is the picture that I used as reference. Hmm, my Jane looks a little sadder (the eyebrows I think) and the hair is a bit messier but other than that I think my one hour of work was worth it!

Sorry for the super lengthy post. Shortening sentences is not my forte. ~_~

What do you think? Do you like these nails? Do you think I'm nuts for spending so much time doing just one nail? Have you ever tried doing nails like this before? I'd love to see them. I also look forward to any constructive criticism that you might have for me.

If you made it to the end of the post without skipping any paragraphs, THANK YOU for reading! Love you guys!

Image from Tumblr

P.S: Should I make an Instagram account??

Rainbow drip nail art (with tutorial, kind of)

Hey everyone! Today I have a super fun nail design that was inspired by Karla. I saw her drippy nails and decided to do my spin on it this week.

Taken indoors at my poorly lit table where I do my nails :P

Here's a picture of the colors I used - only the dots; the swatches were done a while ago. From red to purple:

• China Glaze - Salsa
• A random orange polish
• Orly - Glowstick
• Sally Hansen - Lickety Lime Split
• Essie - Naughty Nautical
• Orly - Snowcone
• The Face Shop - BL602
• Orly - Charged Up

How I did these nails (I did them a little differently from Karla):

1. Use a base coat (please, it's important to use a base coat if you want to protect your nails from ugly staining)
2. Paint two coats of white polish; I used China Glaze - White on White.
3. Put a blob of polish (you might be thinking, what a waste and yes, it is kind of a waste) on a piece of scrap paper/hard paper/cardboard/whatever you want to put it on.
4. Use a dotting tool/toothpick/end of a pen/end of a skewer/whatever qualifies as a dotting tool and create a random dot on your nail.
5. If there isn't enough polish on your dotting tool, dip it into the main blob and create a downwards line from the small dot. You don't have to drag it all the way down to the tip of your nail. Now you have a 'spore' (think enoki mushrooms).
6. Make another 'spore' beside your first spore at a different height.
7. Connect the two spores at the base, making sure to make a U-shape connector and fill in the polish at the tip of the nail.
8. Make however many spores your nail can fill and finish with top coat.

Here is my, um, attempt at showing you how it's actually done on the nail... using Paint. Haha, I'm sorry, I should have done a step-by-step like Karla did.

(My sister claims that my tutorial is cool... Well... if you say so, haha!)

Taken in indirect sunlight

Taken under sunlight

Taken with flash

You can't see Glowstick because Orly wasn't lying when they labeled it as neon. It's blinding. I'm sorry for the terrible flash pictures. I need to build myself a light box stat!

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

I've always wanted to do these nails but some other design would always distract me and steer me away from doing this. So glad I saw this on Karla's blog.

How do you like my drippy nails?? Ever done them yourself? What color combos did you use? Would you try this? Inspired to do this for Halloween?

Thanks, as always, for reading! :)

Whimsical pink and purple floral nail art

Hey everyone. Today I have nails from quite some time ago - a couple of months, I think. It's another whimsy floral design, nothing too hard to accomplish if you're looking to try this design out.

Taken with flash

I started out with Love & Beauty - pale blue as a base for all my nails. I used 2 coats. Then I used a nail art brush to create the flowers with different pink polishes (I can't remember what colors I used, sorry!). Against the blue base, the pink polish turned kinda purple as you can see in the photos.

On my ring finger, I planned on painting a field of tulips so I striped on Sally Hansen - Lickety Lime Split (also the same green polish I used for the leaves). I don't know why I decided to add black polish but after I did, I was like, What?! Why did you do that? >< It looks like spilt engine oil...

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

I covered the black polish up with a darker green polish which I also used to create some depth in the leaves. Then I dabbed on some random yellow, pink and red polish to create my tulip garden.

Part of the idea to paint a tulip garden came from an art class I took in college. I really enjoyed studying the Impressionist-era paintings; I thought the style was so me - big brush strokes, vivid colors, spontaneous painting. So the tulip garden was kind of my Monet moment, I suppose..? Haha.

Taken with flash

Taken under yellow lighting

Taken in natural sunlight

I love this last photo best. The sunlight wasn't too strong and it seems to be giving this ethereal glow which is so pretty!

What do you think of this floral nail design? If you'd like to see a tutorial, just leave a comment and I'll do a step-by-step.

Thanks so much for reading! :)

Galaxy Nail Art

Once upon a time, I attempted to do galaxy nails but they turned out to be a flop. O-kay, they weren't that bad but after seeing tons of amazing galaxy nail art on other people, mine looked like unrecognizable splatters.

And me being me, the failed mani put me off trying it for a second time even though I'm kinda obsessed with space-related stuff and I really wanted to try doing it again. Then recently, I watched this great tutorial and decided to give it another shot.

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Here are some pictures before I cleaned up. Haha, the white splotches are a bit big but I like them that way.

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Can you say obsessed?! I'm in love with how these turned out! All I had to use was a sponge and a dotting tool.

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

The colors I used for this mani (and I used so many that I had to take a picture of the colors I used):
Base color:

• Orly - Liquid Vinyl

Galaxy print:

• Orly - Snowcone
• Sally Hansen - Flashy Fuchsia
• China Glaze - Strawberry Fields
• China Glaze - First Mate
• China Glaze - Exotic Encounters
• China Glaze - Elephant Walk
• China Glaze - Fairy Dust
• China Glaze - Purr-fect Plum
• China Glaze - White on White
• Love & Beauty - gold glitter
• Random pink shimmery polish
• Random green glitter polish
• Random glitter polish (the bigger flecks of glitter you see on my nails)

Topcoat:

• Seche Vite

With Seche Vite, this mani lasted me 4.5 days straight with barely any chipping! I like playing around with colors so every nail had a different combination of colors sponged on.

Here's the awesome tutorial (in French - no, I wish I spoke it but I don't) that helped:



Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Abstract brush stroke nail art - pastel and bright

I came across this abstract canvas brush stroke nail art on Gorgeois's blog last year, I think. She did a tutorial on it and it's brilliant so check it out over here. The first time I attempted it, I had too much polish on the brush and I wasn't very spontaneous so it turned out to be a splotchy mess.

This was my second attempt:

Pretty neat, huh? Obviously it lacks the subtle but mind-blowing beauty of Gorgeois's but I'm happy with how these turned out. It's definitely one of my favorite designs because I like spontaneous, carefree designs. No tools required either - bonus!

I used way too many polishes to be named so I'll leave that out. What's awesome about this design is that you can use any color combination you like and it'll probably turn out nice.

Up close, I really liked the pastel combination but from afar, it just looked washed out whereas the brighter colors were really eye-catching. I really have to do this design again with different colors!

Do you like the bold color combo or the pastel one?

Thanks for reading !

P.S: Don't mind the different fonts of the watermark in every picture, I was testing out fonts to see which one suits me best.