Something I'm not terribly good at or experienced in, but I enjoy nonetheless is nail art. I started a few months ago just trying to do something a little different and fun. I was feeling a huge urge to paint some Warhammer miniatures, but I didn't bring any up to Darwin with me as I only had room for essentials. So I decided to give nail art a bash.
I don't have a terribly steady hand and I'm not much of a painter, so its all very amateurish stuff compared to most people who do it. But I still have fun doing it and I like having nails that are a bit more interesting and conversational than just painting them one colour.
I tend to spend very little on my nail polish. I think about $6 is probably my maximum for one bottle. I'm sure better results could be achieved with expensive brands, but I simply can't bring myself to spend $20 per colour.
So I thought today I might share a few examples of the styles I've done so hopefully someone other than myself can enjoy them. Please excuse the mess around the nails. I often take pictures before I bother doing a proper clean up of stray nail polish. Bad habit, I know.
This one was meant to resemble a night sky... but I failed lol. It was one of my earliest attempts so I suppose it isn't too bad. I used a silver base, then sponged a royal blue over it, then black on the tips. Finally I put a coat of silver glitter over the top.
This one was meant to look like little shirts with peter pan collars. I decided to alternate colours just to make things a little less uniform. I really liked the way they came out, even if they were a little messy.
These were another attempt at sponging and getting a gradient thing happening. I'm still not very good at that. These have a silver base, with purple sponged on top and then pink lightly sponged over that.
These ones turned out pretty messy! I went for a criss cross pattern but I had nothing to keep the lines straight. It was all freehand and I'm quite bad at that. Purple base with pink lines and silver dots.
I decided to try something a little more complex, but very forgiving for those of us not great at fine detail. I did galaxy nails and loooooved them! There are quite a few steps involved with this one, so I used a tutorial instead of just winging it. I used this
Youtube video for guidance. The voice over is a little dramatic, but its a good tutorial anyway. Mine didn't come out quite as perfect, but I think they still looked pretty cool.
This design is really simple, but still fun and eye-catching. I did a base of blue then painted one side black, and alternated various geometric patterns down the centre as a divider between the two colours. By now you're probably noticing I'm a big fan of blues and purples, but I think this would look great in any contrasting colours.
I really liked this design and wore them to death. It was my first time experimenting with decals and stencils. I used grey as my base, then did a stripe of baby blue on most of my nails. On either side of the baby blue I painted a fine white line to outline it. Then I started adding my stencils and decals. I like my nails to match without being the same, so I tried to keep the designs unique.
This last one was my most recent attempt at something interesting and special. Its definitely my favourite so far. I felt so girly and feminine. I alternated bases between a soft purple and a mint green. On top of that I did white stripes on some of my nails, and dots on a few others. Again, I wanted variation in design, but still have them be tied in to one another. Once the stripes and dots had dried, I used a light salmony pink and a darker browny pink to create the roses. I used a dotting tool to splodge on a rough shape of a rose, then with a fine brush, I painted some rough lines to create the look of petals. I did each rose one at a time so the light pink was still wet when painting on the darker petals, this helped them blend in nicely.
Okay, okay. So I know I said my book nerd-ishness was going to be just that one day. But then I found these! Nail art inspired by classic children's books, how cool is that! And its nail art, so it doesn't really count as being too bookish, right? In case you don't feel like clicking through to the article, I saved my three favourites to post here for you guys: The Lorax, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Horton Hears a Who.
