Houndstooth Nail Art Tutorial

Hi everyone! Just thought I would do this tutorial before the green nails challenge. Today I'll show you step by step on how to achieve a (freehand) houndstooth design. The design isn't very hard, I broke it down to a few levels and is a lot easier than it looks!

First, this is the brush i'll be using. It's quite fine, which is perfect for the detailing in this. If you don't have anything as thin as this, that's okay, just don't load your brush with too much polish/acrylic paint. I never load my brush with paint unless i'm trying to cover a large surface or using light colours (white, yellow etc).

Now for the tutorial, yay!

Paint your nails a bright yellow - or any other bright colour, up to you really. Just make sure it isn't too dark. If you want to use dark, consider using white acrylic/polish instead for the design. I've used 3 coats of BYS Yellow(Matte).

Next, draw some squares with black acrylic paint like shown in the pic. Draw as many as you'd like, I just did halfway cause it might've taken a bit of time to do the whole nail. If you aren't confident with drawing squares, you can tape the squares (apply tape to the clear space like in the pic in a plaid-like arrangement and paint over & peel. Tape takes too long for me and my nails are curved, so i'd get crooked lines anyway.

Now draw little slanted triangles. I find it easier to extend the line on the side of the square up a bit and then drawing a diagonal to meet up with it.

Do the same as the previous step, but now adjacent to the square.

Start drawing diagonal lines on the rows with squares. We will draw the diagonals in the clear row next.

Draw diagonal lines connecting the squares from top to bottom. You can draw one long diagonal line across the whole nail, but in my reference pic, they didn't exactly align, which is why I have done them as separate steps. If it's easier for you, then feel free to do so!

Finally, add a topcoat to seal the design and you're done!

I hope this was easy to follow and that you enjoyed it! If you try this, leave me a link! I'll be adding this to the tutorial tab for easier access :)

//Linda

31 Day Nail Challenge Day 3: Yellow Nails

I'm making an early post today! Today's theme is yellow nails and from my previous post, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! The result looks like a race show type of pattern, but I still think it's cool :)

Here's what I'm wearing!

Artificial Light - This is 3 coats of BYS Yellow (Matte). Excuse my dry peeling skin, i'm shedding, seriously. :(

Flash

Flash

Artificial light

My inspiration?

The black and white pattern on the top row! I know there's a stamp for it, but I don't have it :(

What do you think about this mani? Thanks for reading!


//Linda

31 Day Nail Challenge Day 2: Orange Nails

Whaa, spent the whole day doing work! Except maybe for a few hours, I went on a triple date to have dinner and walk along the beach :) I've been designing a poster for my bf's marketing subject and I've only just finished. Thank god I did my nails a little earlier on, otherwise I'd be slaving away right now!

I seriously thought today's challenge would be yellow nails, so I thought of what to do and was about to till I double checked! At least I know what I will be doing tomorrow :)

Today I have a design inspired by a print on google. I decided to do them on accent fingers (thumb and ring finger). I used Ulta3 tahiti, which is as the picture demonstrates, a fluoro orange. I used to wear this colour all the time, but it got lost in the stash somewhere, so I whipped it out for this mani.

Artificial light - I made the lines too thick on the ring finger. I learned my lesson for the thumb afterwards LOL

Flash

Flash

I didn't want to paint all my nails with the design, otherwise it would lose the fluoro quality. Here is where I drew my inspiration from:

Pretty cool & cryptic looking!

What do you think of this mani? Let me know what you think!

//Linda

31 Day Nail Challenge Day 1: Red Nails

AHHHHH so i've finally decided to start! I calculated the days left I had till the end of uni and it works really well right now since all the easy stuff is within the first 2 weeks or so (roughly the amount of time I have left of the semester).

Today's theme is RED nails - My favourite polish colour, alongside pink! I'm not a pink fan, but it suits my skin really well which is why I love it. Any colour from the family gets my vote!

I have something simple and cute today, a black french, red base and little bows and stitches :) I've used China Glaze Masai Red, Liquid Leather and white acrylic paint for the details. Masai Red is quite dark (darker than in the pics) and I would say it very closely resembles City Siren from the Metro Collection. I take back my claim, I looked at Masai Red in daylight and it is a deep red wine colour! Only difference between the two is that Masai Red is a jelly-like base whereas City Siren is a creme.

Artificial light

Artificial light

Flash - if only it was this kind of red! Btw, it's probably very, very hard to tell, but i've also added a small piece of holo glitter from ChG Techno to the centre of the bows - silly me, why didn't I use something bigger?

Cute eh? I seriously can't wait to come up with a whole lot of fantastic stuff, so do keep reading! I've already thought ahead for some designs too teehee. If anyone has started this, let me know so we can do the challenge together!

Hope to see you in the next post!

//Linda

Colour Club Paris White & OPI Red Needle Marble Attempt

I tried needle marbling for the first time! Liz at Liquid Jelly post a tutorial up for it and now everyone is taking a stab at this technique! I thought hey, why not, so I've done an attempt of my own. I've tried it with a toothpick before, but it's hard to get fine detail with it!

I found a pic from google ages ago and really wanted to try it. Obviously mine doesn't look as good as it, but I tried haha Here's what I got,

My attempt is arranged in order from L-R. For the first one, I accidentally smudged it while I was wiping down my needle, so I stopped marbling it! The 2nd and last is the same thing attempted twice and those are the ones inspired by the google pic.

This was my inspiration

So cool! My goal is to be able to do that one day! I think I can see how it was done, but I can't get it to look that way, just need to get the technique right!

What do you think?

btw, still waiting on my muppet glitters! I want them NAO! Thanks for reading :)

//Linda

OPI Mad as a Hatter & China Glaze CG in the City Swatch & my most used nail tools!

Hi everyone! I just spent the past hour going through my giveaway entries and following those who left a link to their blog for me to see. I only got up to 70! I shall continue soon :)

I have pics of MAAH and CG in the City to show today! Also, I'll include pics of my most used tools (if you're curious... or not!)

So of course, I changed my swatch layouts! I hope they are still swatch worthy, kinda taking a design-y approach to it, but I think it is still viewable. They're arranged and cropped like snippets :)

ChG CG in the City is a clear based polish packed with tiny (from the macro shots) purple, silver, black and orange glitters. It does not look like this in the bottle at all, in fact it looks just like silver glitter with a dark purple brown jelly base. There were no problems with the formula, but a bit sheer so about 3 coats are needed for full opacity (swatch uses 3 coats). It dries a tad dull, so use some seche!

OPI Mad as a Hatter, my most wanted nail polish that I finally have! This is crazy sparkly and is a clear based packed with silver, orange, purple, light blue, gold, hot pink and green glitter. What a mouthful! Swatches are 3 coats - it's opaque enough after 2 coats, but I wanted to use a 3rd for my camera. Dries sparkly on its own but would be good to use a thick topcoat since it is a little rough.

And for those interested in what I used to do my designs, here they are!

1. General brush for drawing designs and filling in areas
2. Fine brush used for intricate detailing (I used this for the Lichtenstein nails!)
3. I use this brush when using nail polish
4. Striper brush for lines
5. Smallest dotting tool (marbelling, tiny dots)
6. Largest dotting tool (I like big circles!)

Here's all my brushes (and nail files) in a glass cup

ONE more thing! I think it is safe to say that I will be doing the 31 day nail challenge as of tomorrow! Excited :) Till then, thanks for reading!

PS. Under a week left to enter my giveaway! Don't miss out!

//Linda

Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon Nail Design

Today is the first time I've done a pink Wednesday... it's been long overdue! I've been meaning to do a pink Wednesday, but I always had work due on the Thursday morning so I never got around to it.

Today I have dedicated my nail art for breast cancer. It's a big issue and I always support the cause by purchasing their merchandise when it is being sold at the supermarket or train station. Charity is a big thing for me and I love giving my time to the Salvation Army or by purchasing little nic nacs that are being sold for a cause.

I have chosen to do a ribbon design - but it's not the typical flowy and round ribbon shape, rather I have made it straight and used it as a fun geometric design that can also be practical!

I've used OPI Charged Up Cherry (it's not fluoro in real life!) for the base and used a clean striper brush dipped in Colour Club Paris White for the lines.

I love geometric designs, so I absolutely love this!

The full ribbon design - don't mind the clear polish around the sides!

I purchased this at the train station about a week ago!

And then I had a look to see what else I had

Pink galore! If you have or are planning to do breast cancer inspired nails, leave me a link, I'd love to see it! Thanks for reading, and remember support the cause :)


ribbon-tastic
//Linda

Franken-Kun (Another Domo Post)

I'm gonna be a bit strapped for time soon, so please excuse my lack (if it happens to occur) of posts during the next week or so.

I google imaged domo-kun nails to see if my design popped up and unfortunately it didn't, so I was looking around and came across something I just had to try! It was perfect for halloween too :)

Behold...

Franken-kun!!! Or so I decided to name him :) I would've really like to have done these on my nails, but I don't have time, so I just did a test one. I need to brush up on my line work here... hehe

This is where I got the inspiration from:

I google imaged to see if there were any other similar designs and none! So I may be the first, maybe! I painted these differently to how I painted the domo in the previous post. I must say it was quicker and you can make the teeth sharper, but this means there is less area to paint the red, hence the patchy bits if you look at it up close. I'll probably adopt this approach for future ones anyway because it saves a great deal of time!

Anyway, back to work, hope you all liked this! :D


brainsss
//Linda

Domo-kun & Kitty-kun!!!

Ahh been wanting to do this forever! Now I have and it's so cute :) Short post today, I did Domo-kun nails and an accent finger with kitty-kun on it cause I thought it'd be cool!

Meet...

Pirate-kun, vampy-kun, mo-kun, kitty-kun and domo-kun!

ARR me kunnies!

Gah, so cute. All their eyes are funny shaped since I decided to draw them on instead of using the dotter. Clever me.

I put together my inspiration!

What do you think? Hope you like these - they're too cute to say no!


kawaii
//Linda

Essence Just Shout! & Fabuless Swatch

I'm trying to find out how to layout pictures of swatches... This is what I have for now, but I'm sure I won't like it later and change it to something else. This will do for now though!

Today I went to Target and had a look at the essence stand and I wish there was more variety! I grabbed 2 bottles, Just Shout! and Fabuless.

Just Shout! is a coral-like coloured polish and I love it (I have a thing for coral polishes). It's plain and ordinary, but doesn't hurt to add more corals to my collection :) Like all essence polishes, it is a solid 2 coater and you could probably get away with one good coat.

Fabuless is a dark grey-black polish with tiny shimmer particles. Sometimes it shines blue, sometimes it shines purple. but whatever the case, I just wanted to get a black polish that wasn't flat! This formula was sheer, but covered in 2 coats. I dropped the nail while it was still wet, which explains the bumpy surface :(

I have a dozen of kleancolor polishes to swatch too, but I'm finding it hard to get good pictures of the holo ones. I think I just need to do some with a base colour so the holo glitter shows up.

What do you think of this method of swatching? Would you prefer to see pictures on their own? Let me know in the comments section! Thanks for reading :)


//Linda

Kleancolor Dark Brown, Chunky Holo Black & China Glaze Passion Mani

The mani I have for today wasn't exactly planned. I had actually planned on doing domo-kun nails, but the kleancolor brown was so dark that you could barely see black, so I came up with this.

Quite a random conclusion for a design, I must admit I had just planned on painting chunky holo black on and then leaving it as is, cause well, I didn't know what to do! I decided to add some gold diagonals and rhinestones because I feel 'naked' with no art (or design) on (funny that!). Kind of reminds me of chocolate nom nom...

I've taken a few pics cause I was bored and thought it'd be nice to have more than the ONE pic that I usually have haha All pics were taken under artificial light, and the light reflecting off my laptop!

With my phone

With my camera lens cap

My right hand :)

Hope you enjoyed the pics! Thanks for reading :)

choc-coated
//Linda

Galaxy Nail Art Tutorial

Surprise! I have a tutorial for you today and I will be showing you how I get my galaxies to look really similar to the image I take inspiration from. All I want you to know is that it is not a matter of technique, it is a matter of being able to break down the composition of the galaxy (layout and colour-wise)!
All the wanderings of how I do my galaxies comes down to how I see the image in layers. A lot like in art (for those who aren’t familiar), a work will contain a:
1. Background
2. Middle ground &
3. Fore ground

The image I will be using is this image from the Black Milk website. This will probably be the last of the parts I do. There are only 9 (including this one), but I am a bit uninspired to do them now and have found other areas of interest. However if I do regain that inspiration, I will do the last one! This tutorial may be long, but I’d like to cover everything so that you are all informed about the decision process I go through to create these look. The more you know, the better :)

Have a look at the image. What colour is the background?

I see a dark purple for the top half and a lighter purple for the bottom and a bit at the top left. For the first step, I will be panting China Glaze Urban Night over the whole nail and will be sponging China Glaze Grape pop at the bottom. I also sponged a bit of OPI Ink over the lighter purple to add some sparkle.

Next, look for elements in the middle ground. In this case, the pinkish red part in the centre will be in the middle ground, as well as the pinkish parts under the white glow near her armpit and other stray bits. This part is after the background but before the foreground (indication for this is that you can still see the background and the blue stars are on top). I used a combination of OPI Red and Charged Up Cherry.

I really wish I didn't try to fix this up in the next step, because I think I ruined it! I thought the red was too dark and not noticeable so I tried to lighten it up by putting some white underneath, but I should've put it way before the red step so that it was smooth. Now it looks like a donut LOL I used Colour Club Paris White and then Milani Red ontop and then added OPI Miss Congeniality and then it looks really weird now :(

You want to highlight areas and add finishing touches, like the stars. White is the preferred colour for highlighting and in this case should be done before applying the stars (the stars overlap some white areas). Sponge on every bit of white you can see (including those large glowy blue spots).

After, I sponged some blue around the circles and in the top corner. This would be the time to add any additional colour that may have gotten lost during the sponging process. I added a bit more white in the centre of the spots and added a bit of purple in the top corner and pink in the centre. The middle is so distracting! I totally regret it!!!

Next, add some tiny stars. I used white acrylic paint and a fine brush to get the stars on. For the tiny star particles, I applied fine silver glitter in certain areas, not over the whole nail to achieve a starry look.

To finish, add a top coat. I used Seche Vite :)

You have now completed a galaxy nail! I hope this was easy to follow. The concept behind it is not hard at all and if you apply it to future galaxy inspired nails, you will get pretty galaxies :) It's not as pretty as the blue one I did before, but it'll do for a tutorial test!

Some tips
- Observe the composition of the image and look at the colour and the order that they appear
- Sponge bits a time and add more when needed
- Add white FIRST to lighten up dull colours. This acts like foundation primer, make sure it goes under the layers you'd like them to be on. For eg, If you'd like to lighten the red, add it FIRST then apply red and for the stars, if you'd like to lighten them, apply white and then add colours. What i'm trying to say is adding it first per layer, not all at once. You don't want to reapply the white because chances are they will be sponged over if added all at once.
- DO use glitter for stars if it is easier
- Colours will appear lighter when the top coat is added


I will be adding this tutorial to the tutorial tab for easier access. If you have tried this out, please email me a pic of them and I will feature them in a blog post. Thanks for reading!


Starry
//Linda