Day 27 of OMD Challenge- Bead Inspired Nails

Day 27 is all about Jewelry!  There are a lot of fun and creative options for this theme!  It’s hard to narrow it down.  But after sifting through my jewelry-making goodies I found these gorgeous marbled beads.  I haven’t made them into a necklace yet… so why not at least ‘wear’ them on my fingernails?!

I wish my teal base color was a little brighter.. but oh well, I work with what I’ve got!  Here’s what I’m wearing:

Teal ♥ NYC Tudor City Teal

Beige ♥ Zoya Pandora

Orange ♥ wet n wild Club Havana

Purple ♥ wet n wild On a Trip

I can’t wait to see the other jewelry-inspired designs for today!  Lotsa bling, I’m sure!
27. Jewellery :

Easy Watercolor Nail Art Tutorial

Ok, this is one of my faves!! It’s easy peasy lemon squeezey and gives such an awesome effect!!  Like an artist’s palette!

Step 1 ♥ Paint all your nails white and wait for it to dry.  I know, waiting is hard….so you can use a quick dry topcoat to speed it up if you’d like.

Step 2 ♥ Dab some nail polish onto your 1st white nail using the regular nail polish brush from your bottle- no special tools required!   I used 5 colors and just splotched it on kinda thick and did not overlap the colors.  Just apply enough splotches of color to cover the nail.  I probably did about 7 splotches on my nail.  Some colors I dabbed on once, others I dabbed on twice.  It’s all random and quick and easy.

Step 3 ♥ Take a small piece of saran wrap, plastic wrapper or whatever (I used small snack baggies cut into thirds) and place it over your wet nail.  You can either pull down on the plastic wrap (almost as if you were wrapping your fingertips tightly with the plastic wrap), or simply press down on top of the plastic.  Either way, you will get the same effect- the dabs of polish will get smooshed by the pressure and when you pull the plastic off you will have a beautiful watercolor effect!!  Here’s what my plastic looked like when I pulled it off my nail.

Step 4 ♥  Repeat step 3 to color your other nails. Make sure to do one nail at a time since you want the polish wet when you apply the plastic.

Step 5 ♥  Clean up around your cuticles if the nail polish bled onto your skin at all.  And then topcoat your nails with clear polish to lock in your watercolor nails.

And that’s it!!!  How lovely (and simple!) is this nail design?  It’s perfect for spring!

yellow → AVON Inspire

pink → Zoya Sweet

blue → Sephora by OPI Natural Environ-mint

green → NYC Tudor City teal

purple → Sephora by OPI It’s Hippo To Be Square

Sugar Spun Nail Art

Day 18 of Short and Sweet in Texas’ Nail Art Challenge is dedicated to Sugar Spun Nails!  I have never tried this technique before so I’m glad I got the opportunity to try it out.  I didn’t know the first thing about sugar spun so thankfully KatStaysPolished ‘s Youtube tutorial was there to help.

I went all out with this technique and pretty much covered my nails with the strands of polish.  I figured, go big or go home!  I used NYC Nail Enamel in Tudor City Teal as my base color.  What a pretty teal!  It seemed thin and to avoid having to use several coats I opted to use my Orly Ridge Filler as a basecoat.  That way I only needed two coats of Tudor City Teal to be opaque.  I used a dotting tool and the following coordinating colors to create my spun sugar strands:

Sally Hansen ♥ Mellow Yellow

Sally Hansen ♥ Lime Lights

Sally Hansen ♥ Marine Scene

The funny thing is, I have two bottles of Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow and one is a basic yellow cream, and the other is a sheer yellowish green shimmer.  How did I end up with two bottles of them, and why do they look so different?  I used the greenish one for this design since it coordinated best with my other 2 shimmers.  I took photos without a topcoat… then applied a topcoat on a few nails which morphed the design and made it look all squished.  So for me, this nail art worked best without a topcoat.  I also applied elmer’s (white glue) around my nails before I started- so cleanup was a breeze.  I peeled the white glue off and there wasn’t much mess to clean.  I’m really happy with that glue idea, since I always try to avoid messy nail art or cuticles.

Sugar spun is a fun and interesting look, but it’s probably not my fave.  I do want to try it again around Halloween though.  This technique would probably work well for mummy nail art!  If I paint a few eyeballs and use white polish for my strands I bet I could make my nails look like cute lil mummy faces!

I asked my boyfriend what he thought and he said ‘whoa, they look like balls of yarn’.  LOL.  What do you think of sugar spun nails?  You can view the other girls’ nails by clicking this inlinkz.