Dandelion Nail Art Tutorial

As promised in yesterday's post, I've got a tutorial to show you how to do the dandelion nail art that I did for  my guest post at Polished Elegance!  

I started with two coats of LaCC 1997, and a coat of LaCC 2013 top coat.  All details were done with a nail art brush and white acrylic paint.  

(1) Start by painting your stems, and add a little dot to the tip of each.
(2) Add seven equally spaced spokes poking out of each dot; your stem is the eighth spoke.
(3) With an almost dry brush, fill between the spokes with lots of wispy lines; they don't have to be perfect! (4) Using just the tip of your brush, irregularly dot along the edges of the circle.
(5) Clean up your mani with a brush dipped in acetone, and add top coat to smooth out your work.

It's been ages since I've done a tutorial, but I hope this was clear enough for you.  I'm really in love with how this nail art turned out, and I hope to see some of you give it a try too!  If you do, I'd love to see; feel free to comment with a link (only to relevant blog posts please!!) or tag me on IG @emmaclarem.  :) 

Ikat Print & Tutorial

Happy Monday.  *facepalm*.  Won't go into details here, but I've had an awful morning.  I've been so busy this week that Castle Mani Monday completely slipped my mind, but at least I've got some exciting nail art to show you today!  

First things first though, I got my own lamp on Saturday!  Until now I'd been using my sister's bedside table lamp for my pictures, which she made no secret of her annoyance for.  This new lamp that I got is extremely bright, and it actually works with the lightbox I made a few months ago which never ended up being used.  I'm so happy with how my photos are turning out, much more even lighting and glare is drastically reduced.  You wouldn't believe how much easier it is to take pictures of glitter now!  So, YAY lightbox pictures!! :D

Now what you all came here for, les nails.  The other day I was in Winners looking at the nail polish selection (shocker, I know,) and I found two interesting OPIs.  One of them was Chop-sticking To My Story, a burnt orange-ish-red-ish creme (very technical terms there.)  I was skeptical about how it would look on my skin tone, but it was on sale so why not give it a chance?  :P

When I got home, this polish was just screaming at me to do some ikat print nail art.  I'd never done a look like that before but had seen plenty around, so I perused the interwebz for some inspiration.  While most people did a look similar to this, I wanted a more uniform all-over pattern.  When I saw this picture (middle photo on the far right column) I knew that was how I wanted to interpret the ikat look on my nails and this nail art was born!  

I started with two perfect coats of OPI Chop-sticking To My Story, and waited for that to dry.  I used acrylic paints for everything else, except the gold which is a Color Club striper, and topped it with two coats of Seche Vite.  

I realize that there's a ton of ikat print nail art tutorials out there, but since my interpretation was a but different I figured I'd make a photo tutorial!  I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but don't hesitate to comment with any questions and I'll get back to you asap!  :)

Overall, I really enjoyed wearing this look and I'm definitely glad that I picked up this OPI, it's a little unusual for me but I love it!  At least having something something fun on my nails (as well as coming home from rehearsal to some nail mail and a new Castle episode tonight) is helping to override my huge fiasco this morning.  

How do you like ikat print?  Do you prefer this to the way it's normally done?  Is this look something you'd wear?  I love hearing what you think!  :)

Recoil

And... I'm back!!  I'm so excited to get back to nail art after all the swatching last month (though I still have a ton more to do...)  I really missed doing my Castle Mani Monday posts during January, and I've got one today!  (P.S. There's a tutorial at the end of the post!)

Tonight's episode is 5x13, Recoil, so I've done some dragon-inspired nail art.  Those of you who regularly watch the show (or obsess over it, like myself) should understand the reference here.  Just to clarify, I'll leave you with this still from the episode. 

Nathan Fillion, Penny Johnson Jerald, Stana Katic, Jack Coleman

If you don't watch the show are just aren't up-to-date with it, I won't explain so as to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.  Just enjoy the pretty nail art!  ;)

I started with two coats of OPI Skyfall, and then sponged on the scales with Essie Good As Gold.  Topped with one coat of Seche Vite.  Tutorial time!!

1. Start with your base colour, and add a coat of fast-drying top coat to speed up the process. 

2. Once the base is completely dry, take a piece of tulle and stretch is over your nail.  I have a ton of this stuff lying around from making tutus, but you could get some small pieces of it in remnant bins at fabric stores for pretty cheap. 

3. Paint a little bit of your second polish on a makeup sponge, and dab it on through the tulle.  The key here is to be irregular, make sure you only have a little polish in random spots on the sponge and apply it lightly. 

4. Carefully remove the tulle. 

5. Repeat on the rest of your nails, and finish with a top coat! 

This is a pretty darn cool look in my opinion, and super easy to do!!  I think it would look great in a whole lot of colour combinations, I just might have to re-do this for when I go to see the second installment of The Hobbit! ;) 

Anyways, tonight's episode promises to be an eventful and exciting one, I'm really looking forward to it!  If you're a fellow Caskett shipper, are you excited for tonight?  If not, did you at least enjoy the nail art? :)

Reciprocal Gradient Tutorial

As promised, here is a step-by-step picture tutorial of my Reciprocal Gradient nails from yesterday's post.  Here is what the finished mani looks like:

For this look I used Zoya Dove and Orly Decoded, though I'm sure it would look great in a lot of other colours combinations too!   Please excuse the the less-than-desirable lighting in the tutorial, it was nighttime and I had to use artificial light (I seriously need to make a lightbox) but I figured you'd rather have a funny-coloured tutorial than none at all! 

1.  Begin with a base coat, and paint your nails the lighter of the two colours you've chosen.  

2.  Sponge on a gradient, I use this method. (Skip to 2:10)  Add a quick-drying top coat.  

3.  Place pieces of striping tape (or very thinly cut pieces of normal tape, if you have no striping tape and a lot of patience.)

4.  Sponge on another gradient using the same method, but this time reverse the colours.  So if your gradient was going light-to-dark before, now sponge on dark-to-light.  You may have to go over this one a couple of times to completely cover the gradient underneath.  

5.  (not shown)  Peel off the striping tape, and clean around your nails, first with q-tips and then with a makeup brush dipped in acetone. 

6.  Add a couple coats of your favourite quick-drying top coat for a nice smooth finish, and you're done! 

How do you like it?  Was it easy enough to understand?  Will you be trying this?  If you write a post about it, please link back to this post.  If you do try it, email a link or a picture to ecm.dancer@gmail.com.  I'd love to see!  :)

V-Gaps With A Twist (& Tutorial)

If you read the end of my last post, you'll know that I had a lot of polishes arrive at my house during my absence.  The most-anticipated was without question my first order from Llarowe.  I won a $50 gift certificate in a giveaway (you have no idea how much squealing occurred when I found out) so I placed an order for a couple of polishes to cross off my lemming list!  

Among these polishes were my first Picture Polishes, Violet Femme and Tiffany.  I couldn't wait long enough to try them both out separately, and luckily they look stunning together!  I have been wanting to try v-gaps for a while, but then I had the idea to leave a 'tip', if you will, in the base colour as well as the v-gap!  

 The base colour is two coats of Picture Polish Tiffany, and the purple is Picture Polish Violet Femme.  It's all topped with two coats of Seche Vite.

After the pictures I've made a little tutorial if any of you are curious and would like to re-create this look! 

Time for a tutorial!  I'd like to make it known that I'm in no way claiming that I'm the first to do this, (because somebody else probably has,) but I did pull this idea from my own brain! 

I think the pictures are pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions just leave a comment!  I forgot to take pictures for top-coating and clean-up, so just pretend it's there. ;)

Newspaper Nails Tutorial

Just a quick post tonight with some (very) old photos and a tutorial I made a while ago.  I really like the look that this creates, and it's very simple to do! 

Here is my most recent attempt at the newspaper nails that I was sporting for the Castle season 4 finale last Monday; (my Caskett 'shipper heart is still going crazy).  Since Castle is a writer, I thought this would be appropriate. Unfortunately, it turned out worse than my previous two attempts, and I was left very disappointed. 

2 coats Seche Vite

Base is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'White On'.  I didn't really like this as a base for this one; I found it a bit stark and at times I was getting flashbacks of elementary school when people used to paint white-out on their nails. *Shudder*.  I wish I had something closer to "My Boyfriend Scales Walls' from the OPI Spiderman Collection.  I feel like that colour would have been better underwear for this. 

I used regular newsprint for most of the nails, but on my thumb I cut out letters to spell "CASTLE, always".  Because of the ink not wanting to transfer this time, it was impossible to read in person.  Grrr. 

Instagram effect

 On to the tutorial!  Please keep in mind that this was my first-ever tutorial, and was made quite a few months ago when my nails and cuticles were in a cringe-worthy state.

I hope that was easy enough to understand.  Excuse the font and the... cats. 

I think it didn't work the most recent time because I used a different, higher-quality newspaper and the ink was of better quality and therefore wouldn't transfer as easily. 

Once again, I would like to apologize for the state of my nails and cuticles in the following photos.  For your own safety, I advise you don't enlarge these. Seriously. 

That's some nice chipping right there.  And below, you'll see the mother of all air bubbles.  

As for what I have on my nails right now?  I got back home relatively late last night from dance competition, but couldn't bear to have naked nails for one more day so I quickly put on Orly 'Oui'.  This one was a birthday present from my sister, and I haven't worn it in a while and forgot how pretty it is.  Purple and gold duochrome with LOTS of shimmer/microglitter! 

3 coats 'Oui' with 2 coats Seche Vite

If you have any pointers or questions about the tutorial, or if you'd like to see more tutorials, please leave a comment.  I love reading comments!