Simple rose nail art - with picture tutorial

After my stint with sponging I was waiting to get some time to try out nail painting with toothpick designs. I have been busy lately so finally today when I got 10 minutes free this is what I did

This isn't a very elaborate piece of work - and as I said I finished this in 10 minutes (yes I know its not all that neat but in the time I had this is the best I could manage)

First I will simply describe what I did - just look at the pictures - and at the end I will show you steps pictorially so that it is clear how to do the whole thing. (All pictures can be enlarged when you click on them)

The base of the nail is first covered in Diana of London Jasmine nail paint that I reviewed
here - Diana Of Londone City of Glamour - Jasmine

After that I draw small arcs using Lotus Herbals Color Dew nail enamel in Peach Perfect.
Use a toothpick to make the arcs.

I kept repeating the arcs until the flower was big enough for each nail. And finally I drew some leaves using simple arcs again. For the leaves I used a shimmery nail paint in green - NYC Big Money Front

And that's it - I was done.

And now for the steps - look at the picture I created using paint brush - it gives every step that you need to follow - simple arcs and you are done

Nail paints used:
1.  Diana Of Londone City of Glamour - Jasmine
2. Lotus Herbals Color Dew Peach Perfect
3. NYC Big Money Frost
4. Top coat - Lakme clear glass

I will try this again sometime later when I have a bit more time so that I can do it neatly. But I do hope you like the picture tutorial and can use this sometime. I have small nails but if you have bigger nails you can repeat the flower on your nails and can even try different coloured flowers. I have used the pointed end of the toothpick to pick up the nail color - you can use the flat end to draw thicker petals. You can also do the same piece of art using nail art tools.

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Sponging Nail Art - Soft Pink - tutorial

The only way to decorate my nails was to apply direct nail paint. Then I played a little with mixing two colors in different patterns. Later I advanced to drawing patterns using a brush or toothpicks. More recently I started dabbling with stamping. I had never heard of sponging as a nail art technique until I saw some posts on stylecraze. So I googled and found this interesting tutorial on nail art using sponging

It looked so pretty I thought of trying out something similar. The steps seemed simple so I went ahead. First a look at the finished nails.

Now for the steps - I started with a small sponge piece. The sponge was only big enough to cover my thumb. I like having control over the thing I am holding so I made sure it wasn't too big. Next I took white nail paint and put some on the sponge using the nail paint brush.

Then I gently sponged it all over my nails. To cover all fingers of one hand I had to apply nail paint twice to the sponge. The more depth of color you need the more sponging you will have to do. Also if you use a sponge with very fine holes then the look of the paint on your nails will be denser.

As you can see in the picture above I did not care about the extra paint going outside my nails. That can be cleaned off later.

Once the white color dryed (which was very quick due to low density of paint) I repeated the process with a pink colored nail paint (lotus cozy mulberry). This time I started sponging a little downwards from the nail bed - this makes the white visible as you can see in the picture below.

 The final step was to use a darker shade of pink (Lakme 9 to 5 ) This was sponged only on the tips of the nails. I used a Q-tip - dipped it in nail polish remover and cleaned the sides of the nails with it.

Then I gave the complete nails a layer of top coat. When it dried out I used my stamping kit to stamp on snowflake like flowers to alternate nails starting with the thumb. I finished off by putting random dots using a toothpick. Stamping and dots were done using the same white nail paint that I used for sponging.

A final layer of top coat and I was done.

 And here is a picture of the sponge piece that I used.

Nail paints used:
1. Lotus Herbals Color Dew Pure White (81)
2. Lotus Herbals Color Dew Cozy Mulberry (94)
3. Lakme 9 to 5 Lavender lush
4. Top coat - Lakme clear glass

I hope you like the above step by step description for this very easy method. I know a lot of you out there are experts at this technique - please do give suggestions on how to I can improve this next time onwards.