I am always amazed by the nail art that I see in beauty blogs and on Pinterest. But at the same time, I wonder if a person like me, with very average artistic skills, can actually make my nails look that good. So, this Easter break my roommate and I pulled up a few of our favorite designs and made our best attempts at replicating the looks. Some of them turned out close to the desired product, and others went horribly wrong.
Polka-Dot Nails
These seem relatively simple. You paint your nails fully in one color and use another color to create polka dots using a toothpick. I like this example because they switched the colors on the ring finger, which is a little different. Our nails turned out fairly close to the example, but one tip is if you can find toothpicks with a flat ended side, use that instead of the pointy tip.
Newspaper Nails
The newspaper nails both looked the best and were the easiest to do. You start by painting your entire nail a light color, like white, beige, or a soft pink. Next you dip you nail in rubbing alcohol. Then, you put a small piece of newspaper on the nail for about 5 seconds. When you peel the newspaper off, the words or design will transfer. My roommate got creative and used comic strip characters instead of words!
Sunset Nails
I think that these are absolutely beautiful in the example, but they are definitely tricky to do in real life. You have to buy make-up sponges that are triangle shaped. Then you dip the sponge in water and ring it out just a little bit. Next, you paint the three colors you want to use in lines in the tip of the sponge (the darkest color closest to the tip). Finally, you blot the sponge on paper and then blot it on your nail. There is a lot of excess nail polish that gets on your fingers, which can be hard to get off and makes the style look more messy than it should, but overall they turned out pretty good!
Marble Nails
Here is where things got messy for us. In our final project, we tried the hardest style. To do marble nails you need a small cup of water, scotch tape, and a toothpick. You put drops of nail polish in the surface of the water and layer the colors. Next, you swirl the colors around with a toothpick. Use the scotch tap to frame your nail so the excess paint doesn’t get on your finger. Finally, dip your nail into the polish in the water. As you can tell by the example and our nails, this style was an epic fail for us. I do not recommend it, but it was hilarious to give it a try!