Hi Goddesses
Firstly, THANK YOU for the awesome response to last week's first How To post. I am glad so many of you enjoyed it, found it simple, and were encouraged to try it. THAT'S what it's all about :) Yay :)
Today, we're going to take a look at this Barry M Gelly Polka Dot mani I did a few weeks ago. It's possibly THE most popular nail art I've ever done (it seems polka dots make ALL of us smile) and has been shared more times than I can count. When I followed one of the shares, I was really sad to see a comment which basically said "I like it, but wow that looks complicated."
This mani is the exact opposite of complicated. It's soooo easy and simple, and is also really quick. Sometimes nail art does take a while, but this one literally took 5 extra minutes per hand - that's not bad is it?
So, the tools -
* your polishes. I used all 5 of my summer Barry M Gellys. You certainly don't need 5 polishes to do this mani. It can even be done beautifully with one polish. Do what suits you. PLEASE don't feel you have to use 5.
* a dotting tool. I used my largest, which then has a fairly small nib at the opposite end - you'll be using them both. Dots of different sizes seem to work especially well in this type of mani, giving it an extra flair, for not much extra effort!
* a blobbing mat! You'll need somewhere to do small blobs of polish that you can then dip your dotting tool into. My favourites are the lids from takeaway boxes, but I know people who use wax paper, paper plates, old lids ..... do what works for you
* as you're going to be changing which polish is on your dotting tool, you're going to need a napkin and possibly some remover to keep your tool clean.
Ready? Here we go!
Step 1
Paint your nail with your base colour. In this case, we are using white, but it could be any colour. You want to achieve opacity here.
Step 2
Blob your first polish onto your blobbing mat. On each nail, you want to place 1 large dot, and then 2 smaller dots. I recommend you do all the large dots first, clean your dotting tool, then flip it over and do your smaller dots. You want to make sure your smaller dots are a fair distance away from your large dot, although this will become harder as we go through the colours!
If you were sticking to just 1 colour for your dots, I would recommend you keep flipping your dotting tool, so that you get a good balance of dots - large, small small, large, small small etc
Step 3
Now take your 2nd colour. Again we are going to place 1 large dot and 2 small ones. Make sure your dotting tool is clean before you dot!
I would recommend you put your large dot far away from the first large dot - we're trying to get even spacing
Step 4
Keep repeating.
And if you're so inclined, repeating.
Step 5
Once you have rotated through all your colours, stand back and review. Does your mani need more dots? If so, go in and add them tactically HOWEVER, make sure you do a fresh blob of polish on your blobbing mat. Your old polish will be sticky by now and will leave wisps of polish "hair" over your mani. If you look carefully at the next photo you'll see where I thought I could get away with that bwahahaha.
Step 6
Top coat and clean up.
Final words
The finished tutorial nail doesn't look as nice as my original mani, mainly because the nail is about 5 times longer lol, but I hope you get the point :) It is interesting to see how it's distorted the spacing of the colours though, so think carefully about how many colours you want to use.
Don't have a dotting tool? Don't worry, your house will be littered with things you can use instead - old pens, dried out rollerballs or felt tip pens, grips, cocktail sticks, toothpicks, needles. You don't need special tools to do this, but if you want to get them, do, because they're only about $3-5 for a set of 5 on eBay.
Please let me know if you give this a try - feel free to share it on the Facebook wall. Also, I need to start building a list of what you'd like to see next, so get commenting :)
Enjoy xx