Monday, September 16, 2013

NOTD Mermaid Tail Tutorial

I've been on a nail art craze lately as I've had a lot of free time during the day and I haven't been feeling the best (painting my nails always makes me feel better!). I was looking for some ideas online yesterday and found some pretty cool fish scale ones so I decided to try to recreate them and make them look like a mermaids tail :) I've done a basic tutorial below so you can have a go too! (sorry for the not amazing quality of the pictures, my bf has my camera cards so I had to use my phone).


  MERMAID TAIL NAILS

1. Decide on the colours you are going to use. I used yellow (Rimmel London Lemon Drop), green (Sally Hansen Mint Sprint) and blue (Essie Mint Candy Apple) to go with the ocean theme but any three colours that are next to each other on the rainbow will work well. Also grab your favourite base coat (Sally Hansen Base Coat) and top coat (Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat). For this nail look you will also need a black nail art pen (not pictured, but I used 1000 Hour) and some cotton buds and nail polish remover to clean up.

    

2. Paint your nails first with your base coat and then with two coats of yellow. Don't worry if it's not perfect as it will be covered up later. Wait for your nails to dry completely before moving onto the next step.

                                

3. Using the green polish first, wipe the majority of the excess nail polish from the brush. You only want a very light splattering of colour. I found letting the polish dry for a tiny bit on the brush helped this step. Another way to do this is to use a makeup sponge. Put a small amount of colour onto the sponge and then press lightly onto the nail (I couldn't find any makeup sponges in my room so mine looks a bit messy). Do the same process with the blue now. Don't stress if this isn't perfect as you won't really be able to tell in the finished product. Allow polish to dry.

                               

4. Now grab your black nail art pen and starting from the base of your nail draw semi circles to create the scales. Don't press too hard with the black otherwise it will smudge the colours (you can prevent this by waiting for the polish to fully harden). Let the black dry for a few minutes and then put on a clear top coat. Dip your cotton buds in nail polish remover and clean up and excess polish from around your nails. And there you have your mermaid tail nails!

                               
                               
                               
     
   

2 comments:

  1. This is so pretty, Madeleine! You did a fantastic job with this nail art look, and I love the easy how-to tutorial too!

    xx

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Nalini! I really like using my nail art pen now-makes designs so easy to do! Xx

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