How To Train Your Dragon Nails

I went to see How To Train Your Dragon 2 at the cinema recently and loved it! So I decided to paint the dragons from the movie on my nails. The base colour I used on my nails is OPI's Bubble Bath - a natural looking base colour like this is best for this design to make sure all the colours from the dragons stand out really well.

How to get this look: 

Apply the base colour on all of your nails and then paint the face shape of each dragon in the suitable colour.

After painting all the base colours for the dragons you can go back and start adding details. As you will be layering lots of colours on top of each other you should work on each nail a bit at a time and move on to the next nail while each layer of polish dries.

For the 'Toothless' nail (the black dragon) I used nail polish remover on a wooden stick to remove the black polish where I would be painting the eyes, this was so I could use a green base and then a green glitter polish to make the eyes really bright and shiny.

All the dragons detailing was drawn with nail art pens.

To finish off let your nails dry for a while to avoid smudging and then apply a top coat.

Tour de France Nails

The Tour de France started this weekend and I went to watch the Grand Départ in York so I painted my nails for the occasion. For those who aren't cycling fans the yellow nail respresents the yellow jersey which the race leader wears and the red polka dot nail represents the king of the mountains jersey which is worn by the best climber in the race. The base colour I used was OPI's Alpine Snow, this is my favourite base to use for most nail art designs as it is a nice bright white colour and I find OPI polishes to be good quality and last longer without chipping.

How to get this look:

Apply a clear base coat and then two coats of white polish. It is important to paint two coats of colour when using white polish so you get a bold bright white colour.

Use nail art pens in appropriate colours for the individual designs on each nail, for the logo have a photo in front of you to copy very carefully and practice a few times on paper first using your nail art pen to perfect the lettering and size.

When you apply the top coat to a design like this on a white base you must be very careful as smudging is very likely to occur. (As you can see this happened to me on my polka dot nail!) Let your nails become dry to the touch before applying the top coat and on nails with an intricate design like the logo you should dab the brush on the nail leaving blobs of top coat until you have covered the whole nail. You will have a thick layer of top coat if you do this but I find this is the best way because if you drag the brush across the nail how you would usually apply top coat it will smudge the nail art and this will be very noticeable on a white base.