Scaled Gradient Nail Art

For the third challenge of September (in #STNChallenges) the theme is scaled gradient. The concept is to repeat a gradient pattern on your nails. When I read about this theme I thought, wow something nice and simple, I enjoy sponging nail art so this should be fun. Only when I got down to doing this on my tiny nails did I realize it wasn't all that easy!

Scaled Gradient Nail Art

I used Essie Mambo and Sally Hansen So Much Fawn (swatched HERE). The concept of a scaled gradient as I said, is to repeat a gradient pattern on your nails. For this you need to tape off a part of your nail and do sponging (click HERE for details on how to do sponging). Then you let this dry out, cover up the sponged area so that the rest of the nail is now available. And you repeat the sponging on this part of the nail.

My Little Pony Rainbow Dash Nail Art Tutorial

Guest post by Nicky 
Nicky loves to do nail art and does an extremely good job of it! She sportingly agreed to do a post for OurExternalWorld where-in she has shared a lovely nail art that reminds me of Rainbow Dash from the My Little Pony collection - one of my childhood favourites! Nicky this is what I have named your nail art.

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

To achieve this look you will need 

1) 4 bright nail paints,
2) White nail paint
3) Black nail paint
4) Stamping plates (used here W111 and W117 from Winstonia)
5) Stamper
6) Sponge (makeup sponge works best)
7) Base coat
8) Top coat
9) Transparent shimmery nail paint like fairydust from China Glaze (optional)

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

Collect everything before you begin!

First apply the base coat of your choice and let it dry completely. Then take a sponge, here I used a makeup sponge. Regular sponge from kitchen could also be used to do this manicure. But the smoothness in blending colors could be different.

Now apply a base color and I used plain white. After that apply your choice of four bright colors on the sponge, here I have used orange, red, yellow and blue. Depending on your nail size you could use as little as two colors to achieve the same look.

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

Now dab that sponge lightly on a paper towel once and then dab it on your nail and keep dabbing lightly moving in an up and down fashion covering the entire nail. You can repeat this step as many times as you need to. Just make sure each layer is completely dry before sponging again otherwise you will start smudging the bottom layers and ruin the whole thing.

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

After that I added a coat of fairydust from china glaze but this is optional. This just adds some nice soft shimmer to the finished look. Sponging will make the nail little bumpy but applying top coat will smooth out the whole thing and will blend the colors better.

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

After this I cleaned up the cuticles and then stamped the images on the nails..

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

First stamp all the nails with the rainbow pattern using a white nail paint. Then once it dries off stamp the accent nail with the image of a horse.

My Little Pony Rainbox Dash Nail Art

Hope you all liked it.

About the author: I am Nicky. Currently taking care of my 3 year old son. In May 2012, I discovered a new hobby of nail stamping. Still trying to learn many new things. You can check out more of my work on my facebook account.         

https://www.facebook.com/nickylovenails?ref=tn_tnmn   

Thank you so much Nicky for sharing this awesome nail art! Girls please leave your comments for Nicky in the comment section below. Lets tell her what a lovely piece of work this is!

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Octopus nail art - tutorial

A friend on style craze did this really cute animal nail art with a hippo - I was inspired and thought of giving something in the animal theme a try. After a lot of thought I decided to try an octopus. I wanted to make mine really cute but well, ahmm... this is how it turned out

Here are step by step pictures - please ignore the horrible control on the brush - ya I tried doing this with a painting brush - which I realized is wonderful for paints but not for polishes! Keep reading because I do have a picture tutorial - and I'm sure those of you who are more practised with nail art can do a great job on this same little octopus!

Octopus Nail Art - Nail Polishes used

 Step 1: I took a paint pallet and mixed the Lotus white nail paint with NYC blue nail paint to create a light blue (for the ocean) colour - and then sponged it on using the same technique I used for step 1 of sponging-nail-art-soft-pink-tutorial

Octopus Nail Art - Step 1

Step 2: I used the Sally Hansen Salon nail paint and drew round circles in the middle of the nails using a 0 number paint brush (round nail art tools can be used for a smoother circle)

Octopus Nail Art - step 2

 Step 3: Next I took a toothpick - broke its tip and used it to draw the wavy legs of the Octopus

Octopus Nail Art - step 3

 Step 4 and Step 5 - I took the Sally Hansen Diamond Strength to add two dots for the eyes and then the white nail paint to draw the smile

Octopus Nail Art - step 4

And finally the tutorial on how to do it yourself:

Octopus Nail Art - Tutorial

Nail paints used:
1. Lotus Herbals Color Dew Pure White (81)
2. NYC - In a Minute - shade 206 East Village
3. Sally Hansen - Complete Salon Manicure - shade 260 So Much Fawn
4. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength - shade 28 Save the Date

I hope you like the tutorial despite my horrible attempt. I wish I was more patient! Do share your trials if you do an Octopus :)

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.