How To ... Freehand Roses - Tutorial for International Nail Art Day

Hi Goddesses

Today is International Nail Art Day - how cool is that?  Loads of bloggers are taking part, and you can join in too.  Second thought - there's a nail art day but there's still no Crumpet Day?  How wrong is that!

Lol.  This last week on the blog has been dominated by my entry for this year's piCture pOlish BlogFest.    And what did almost all of those posts have in common?  Roses.  And that's what today's How To is all about.

Now, before we start, can I just say - these are mega easy!  I was intimidated for months, but seriously, there is no need to be.  They may look difficult, but they really are not, and trust me, once you start, you will not be able to stop lol!

Things You Will Need

* a base polish

* a colour for your roses, and a colour for your petals.  The petal colour should be a couple of tones lighter or darker than your rose colour.  In this tutorial, I mixed my colours for my petals, but usually, I don't do that, so please don't feel it has to be that complicated

* a colour for your petals.  Again, I have mixed my colours, but that's only because I have used what I used for the piCture pOlish roses.  Usually I use a dark green acrylic paint.  Polishwise, any dark or medium green will work.

* a large dotting tool

* a small nail art brush or thin dotting tool

* a blobbing mat

* top coat

* clean up materials

Ready?

Step 1

Paint your nail with your base colour.  I have used a white.

Step 2

With your large dotting tool, create the outline of your rose.  The dotting tool really helps you here.  You are trying to create a lumpy circle, so take advantage of the irregular edges the dotter will give you.  NOTE - you are not dotting your rose on, you are using the tool to draw an outline, the way you would with a brush.  The trick is to really get a good blob on that dotting tool!

Step 3

Colour in your rose.

Step 4

Add your petals.  Because the piCture pOlish challenge was about only using 3 colours, I mixed Beige and Wisteria to create my petal colour.

With a thin nail art brush or thin dotting tool, create your first 2 strokes.  I create a shape that's a bit like an apostrophe and a comma - they sit side by side, sort of interlock, but don't touch.

Step 5

Create the rest of your petals.   Just go round, adding extra loops.  Irregularity works well.  As you move out from the centre of the rose, try to create your petal out of line with the previous row of petals, so that they don't all stack up in neat rows.

Step 6

Add your leaves, first with a triangle shape.

Usually, you would just use a green paint or polish here.  Again, to comply with the pp rules, I mixed Wisteria and Honeydew.

Step 7

Colour in your leaves.

Step 8

Add top coat.

See, not difficult at all, is it ?  Create random blob shaped things?  We can do that!  Draw commas and apostrophes?  We can do that too!   It's the petals that intimidated me, but really, easy as peasy :)

Quick recap - and enjoy!  xx

How To .... Polka Dot Nails

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

How To ..... Acid Wash Nails

Hi Goddesses

Are you ready for some excitement??  Here we FINALLY go with some tutorials!  The How To series is mainly focussed on nail art and techniques, but it will also have some other themes such as photography, networking and other blogger-friendly stuff :)

Now, I dithered.  I did.  Photos or video? My nails or a swatch stick?   In the end I settled on photos of a swatch stick - but please let me know how this works for you.  For me, it was a quick and easy process and a good place to start - maybe one day I'll head to YouTube, but not just yet :)

Today's mani then is the Acid Wash nails I did here - 

Many of you loved them, as did I, and you also wanted to know how I had improved from this monstrosity - lol.

First up, these are the tools you're going to need - 

- your polishes.  I would suggest you do a colour family or colours that match, starting with the lightest first.  Part of the failure of the original mani is that some colours just do not look good on top of others

- a stiff brush.  Mine is just from a set of brushes, it's nothing special.  Short bristles are going to work better here.

- lots of acetone / polish remover

- a napkin, to keep wiping your brush on

- a quick drying top coat

- your usual base coat

Ready?  Let's go!

Step 1

Apply base coat, and your first polish.   How many coats is up to you, but you need opacity here.   Apply top coat.  This is essential as you need to create a barrier over this base polish.

Step 2

Apply 2nd polish - 1 or 2 coats, your preference.  I used 2.

Step 3

Apply 3rd polish, again, 1 or 2 coats for preference.   I used 1.    It's up to you how many polishes you use, so Step 3 isn't essential - you could just use 3 colours.   After my final colour before the final colour (if that makes sense), I apply top coat again.  This is optional - I do it so that when I start the acid wash part, the acetone doesn't want to go further than this colour.  This then gives me more control over revealing the other colours.

Step 4

Apply final colour (apologies for the crap pic).

Step 5

Take your brush and dip it in your polish remover.   You want to make firm strokes with it, in the same direction.  Start gently and build pressure until you break through the top coat to the colour beneath.

I recommend that after you create each "slice" in your polish, you wipe the brush on your napkin, and redip in acetone.   This is especially important when you get to the deeper layers, as you don't want a dirty brush to pollute what you're doing.

Step 6

Keep repeating this - don't go further than that first colour at this stage.

Step 7

Once you are happy with the "slices" you have made in your polish, you are now ready to proceed to the next layer.  My personal preferences are this - don't go to the next layer on every "slice" - you want to ensure colour variation.   Don't go to the 2nd colour throughout the whole of your "slice" - try to maintain a coloured rim, again for colour variation.

Step 8 

Repeat, this time going down to your base colour.   Again, don't do it on every "slice".

Step 9

Review.  Are you happy, does it look right?   Sometimes I add more slices now, or make some of the slices bigger.  This is where you get final approval :)

Step 10

Apply top coat - I always use Poshe.

And there you have it.   I love these designs, and they are also such fun to do.  If you try this, post it on my FB wall so that I can see how you got on, and please let me know what you thought of the tutorial.

Enjoy - and have fun!  xx :)