Sunday, August 23, 2009

Checkered Nails--No Nail Art Tools required!

Checkered nails has been frequently requested on my channel since I first started in with nail videos. Much like the animals prints that I have done in the past I was not all too enthusiastic for this one but I thought, "If someone wants to see it, I'm happy to do it!" so then came the research. I had no idea how to even begin. My initial thought was to draw a tic-tac-toe board then alternate filling them in...not such a great idea. It is extremely dificult to draw so many straight lines and then fill every other block in without venturing outside of the lines. So then I stumbled on the message that I use in my video--no nail art equipment required!
Here's what the finished product looked like:

If you haven't already checked out the video then click below:

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Purple Plaid Nals

Hi Everybody!

It's been a while since I've done a new post--life gets crazy around here. The design I did for this tutorial included a new color that I recently picked up at Ulta. The color Pamplona Purple is part of the OPI Espana Collection and to be honest I had to stop myself from bringing them all home. Each color was gorgeous and unique but, I refuse to pay $8.50 a piece at Ulta so I will be ordering my fav's online via transdesign.com.

Onto the design--
While this pattern looks very easy to do, I find that drawing straight lines is both crucial and extremely difficult. I picked up a couple of tips to drawing straight lines in making this specific design.
  1. Balance your hand--just like applying liquid eyeliner find something to balance your drawing hand on to help you
  2. Move your finger and not the brush- sometimes rolling your hand is the absolute easiest way to draw the line
  3. Be patient
  4. Don't be afraid to re-try a nail--no one's perfect
Truthfully when I look at this design I think that the pattern is summer-y but the colors make it almost fall-ish. Let me know what you think of the pics below!





If you'd like to see a live tutorial on the above design, click below: