Showing posts with label nails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nails. Show all posts

Friday, September 13, 2013

Floral Water Marble (Step-by-step)

I wanted to do an updated blog post on floral water marbles. This post is going to focus more on the design in the water and less on the actual manicure. If you'd like to check out my previous floral water marble post, click here.
 
What you'll need: A glass to hold your water in (preferably something small like a shot glass), distilled water, nail polish and an orange stick or tooth pick to help create your design.


 
Step 1: Create a bulls eye with your polish.
This is done by alternating drops of polish into your glass. Your polish will spread and eventually take on a bulls eye appearance.


 
Step 2: Take your orange stick and gently start from the outside of your bulls eye and drag towards the center. You don't want to dip too far into the polish, just use the finest point of the orange stick to create your designs.
 
* The farther the polish ring is from the center, the dryer it is. It's been sitting on top of the water longer than the other rings. If you notice that the polish is not moving easily, it is most likely because it has already started to dry. Try starting your lines from a ring closer to the center.
 

 
Step 3: This time your starting point will be on the opposite end. With the same motion, gently drag towards the center until you meet your two lines together.

* When you create a line, your next line should always be directly across from the one before. (Ex: You start at the top, your next line should be from the bottom. You start from the right, your next line should start from the left, etc). This will help make your petals as symmetrical as possible.


 
Step 4: Create a line from the outer left and drag towards the center.
 
 
 
Step 5: Create a line from the outer right and drag towards the center, meeting up with all of your other lines in the center. This completes a basic floral water marble and you can choose to stop here if you'd like. I prefer a flower with more petals.
 
 
 
Step 6: For this step, I cut my top-left petal in half, gently dragging towards the center.
 
 
 
Step 7: Since I cut my top-left petal in half for step 6, I will then move on to the opposite side of my design, cutting my bottom-right petal in half and gently dragging towards the center.
 
 
 
Step 8: For this step I cut my bottom-left petal in half.
 
 
 
Step 9: Last step! Cut your last petal in half, top-right. You now have a floral design with 8 petals. You can choose to add more petals if you'd like.
 
 
 
Here is the design as an accent nail on my most recent mani. If water marble nails seem too time consuming, add the design to just one nail like I did here. Quick, easy and gets a lot of compliments.
 
 
As always, feel free to leave any comments/questions below!
Hope you enjoyed this step-by-step!
<3

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Galaxy Nails (Tutorial)

Galaxy print has been on just about every form of clothing lately. Shirts, socks, shoes, pants, you name it. Black Milk Clothing's ridiculously awesome leggings would be by far the most popular of the galaxy theme. You can check them out here.
 
If you feel like galaxy print is too loud for your clothing style (like me), applying the print to your nails is a cool way to show it off in a much quieter way.
 
Here's how I create my galaxy nails:

(This was my reference picture, I suggest you find a picture of a galaxy that you love and recreate it!)
 
 
 
Step 1: Paint your nails black. I used OPI- Black Onyx.
 
 

Step 2: Take a cotton wedge and cut a random chunk of it off. This does not need to be perfect in any way. The weirder and more ragged it is, the cooler the stamp. Since the wedge chunk is so small, I used tweezers to hold it.
 
Step 3: Apply a drop of polish onto some scrap paper and stamp your sponge into it.
 
*Tip: stamp your sponge onto your paper a few times to remove any large amount of polish.
 
 
 
Step 4: Sponge your blue onto random areas of the nail. If you feel like you've applied too much blue, stamp over it with the black. This is fool proof and there's no right or wrong way.
 
 
 
Step 5: Repeat Steps 2 & 3. Except this time instead of blue, use a green color and then stamp it onto your nail. As you can see, I stamped the green lightly around the blue.
 
 
 
Step 6: Repeat the same process as you did with the blue and green, except this time add purple.
 
 
 
Step 7: Sponge on some white. These will resemble the random clusters of stars.
 
 
 
Step 8: Take a tack or something with a very fine tip, and apply some of your bigger brighter stars. Here I used white and gold.
 
 
 
Step 9: Lastly, add a glitter top coat. This is the best part. It really pulls together the entire print and it looks like tons of tiny little stars. I suggest adding only a thin coat of glitter at a time, you don't want to completely hide all of your cool colors underneath.
 
 
 
And that's how I created my galaxy nails. This would also look cool as an accent nail if you didn't feel like taking the time out and doing every nail like I did. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
 
 
 
<3