Showing posts with label floral. Show all posts

Tutorial: Poppies Nail Art

Posted by Erin on 9/12/11. Filed under: , ,
3 Comments

I took some time last night and finished the tutorial I told you guys about yesterday. Because it was dark out and my apartment is so old that there is virtually no overhead lighting in it, I had to make due with the flash on my camera. 

This is a really simple design that even nail art beginners should be able to master. If you decide to try it out, please show me your work. I'd love to see what colors you've used :)

Poppies Nail Art Tutorial


Step one:
Compile all of your materials. You'll need:
- A base color. I like to use a muted color so that the brightness of the poppies really pop (no pun intended). For this mani I used Virtuous by Me Me Me. 

- 2 bright colors in similar shades. For example, if you chose to go with blue poppies, you might want to use a royal blue and then maybe a teal blue. I decided to use 2 shades of red. One is a deep burgundy shade and the other is a true bright red. 

- An orangey yellow or mustard colored polish. You could probably get away with using a true yellow, but I think an orange toned yellow looks best.

- A black striping polish OR black polish and a striping brush. Doesn't matter. Essentially they're both the same. 

- A small-medium sized dotting tool.

Step two:
 Paint your nails with your base color. And please, pardon my messy paint job.

Step three:
Add a small dollop of polish to your nail. Try to visually plan out where your poppies are going to be and add your dollops accordingly. Using your dotting tool, gently manipulate the polish to create an imperfect flower shape. These do not have to look identical to one another. In fact, the less perfect you make them, the better the outcome. And don't forget to alternate your poppy colors!

You should get something that looks like this:

Step four:
Once you have all of basic poppy shapes on your nail, start adding centers to them using your yellow polish. Honestly, I just use a light touch with the polish brush for my centers. But if you aren't feeling confident enough to to that then you can always use your dotting tool. Just make sure that the yellow centers aren't perfectly round. They should be slightly ovaled and off center, and again- imperfect.

Step five:
 Using your black striping brush, add (imperfect) black centers to the yellow and random stems.

Tips and tricks:

- Be imperfect. I know I am being redundant about this but it's worth stressing. I've done a lot of floral designs, and the reason they look good and are fun to do is because you have a lot of room to screw up. They actually don't look good if they're perfect.

- Mess around with colors. Sometimes colors that you wouldn't expect to look good together end up working well in this type of design.

- Do one nail at a time.

- Have fun. Tweak the design to your hearts content. There is no wrong way when it comes to nail art.

Purple Poppies

Posted by Erin on 9/9/11. Filed under: , , , , ,
4 Comments

My first love is nail art, and I haven't been posting enough of it lately. With the steady stream of new polishes being added to my collection, I put nail art on the back burner. But yesterday I did a design that I LOVE and I plan to do more renditions of it in the very near future. Here is my poppies design:






The base color I used for this is a really pretty lavender from Jordana called Lavender Fields. The 2 colors I used for the poppies are Funky Dunkey by OPI and Through the Grapevine from Wet n Wild. 

NOTD: Vintage Rose Garden

Posted by Erin on 8/9/11. Filed under: , , , , ,
3 Comments

 I love me some floral nail art. It's my go-to nail art design when I'm running low on inspiration or try something new that didn't quite work out as well as I'd planned. I really love this mani, although the cuticle drag from the base color leaves something to be desired. Still, it's a win in my book. How can you go wrong with yellow and purple?








The yellow I used is Lemon Icecream from Barry M. As I mentioned before (and as you can see), I did get a good deal of cuticle drag with this one. The consistency on all of the Barry M Icecream colors is a bit odd. They're kind of a combo of a jelly and a creme, which ends up being sort of....milky? They cover exceptionally well though and the colors are fantastic. The purple I used for my ring finger and as one of the colors on the roses is Cheshire from Funky Fingers. It's a gorgeous color with a neon finish, which makes it difficult to photograph. The lighter purple color that I used on the roses is Berry Icecream from Barry M.

Are any of you partial to the floral manis? Show me some links of your work! :)



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