Netty Rainbows

OPI William Tell Me About OPI, Ozotic 534, Face Of Australia White Gold, China Glaze Devotion, Bundle Monster BM-208

After a weekend away (wearing William Tell Me About OPI), a 5.30am start to catch a flight back to Sydney, then a full day of work I was feeling a little bit lazy by the time I made it home. I couldn't be bothered to take off William Tell Me About OPI, even though there was tip wear and it was looking a bit shabby, so I added a coat of Ozotic 534. Instant rainbow magic! Then I thought, why not add some stamping over the top, so I did with White Gold. Then I thought, why stop at one netty looking stamp? Trap those rainbows! I'll add another layer of stamping! And that was how this bizarre lazy manicure was born! It was actually a lot cooler looking in real life than in these photos.

Please ignore the chunks taken out of my left hand. I had a slight altercation with the grater while cooking last night. Luckily it just got the polish and not my fingernail! 

Mermaid Nail Tutorial

China Glaze Custom Kicks, China Glaze Grape Pop, China Glaze Rodeo Diva, Essence You Belong To Me, Face Of Australia White Gold

A few people have been asking how I did the scaley nail on my Sparkly Mermaid Nails mani, so here's a tutorial for it. It's really very simple, all you need to be able to do is to make dots. 

First I start with a base coat, usually using one of the colours I'll be using for the dots. Then, starting from the tip of my nail I make a row of dots using different colours. Sometimes I put a blob of each nail polish on my desk and dip my dotter in there, other times if I don't want to waste any polish I'll just poke the brush of the polish with my dotter. After each dot I wipe the dotter on a cotton ball soaked with nail polish remover so the colours don't get all mixed up. 

The reason I use so many different colours is that it looks better if there aren't any dots of the same colour next to each other, and having lots of colours makes it easy to keep them all separated. 

After the first row, I just keep dotting different coloured dots down the nail, overlapping them like the scales of a fish. 

At the end I use the same colour as the base coat to sort of form a start off point for the scales. In my original mani I started from the bottom, instead of the top, so it was backwards to this, but you can do it either way. And finally, finish it all off with a nice top coat!

This one is a little bit messier looking because I used smaller dots but it's the same process. So, if you can use a dotting tool and have a bit of time then you can do this mani! I hope this made sense. If you're unclear about anything just comment and I'll try to explain it in a better way.

***** a little extra *****

Since I popped this online I've seen a couple of other nail bloggers' designs using this tutorial and they just look so amazing that I wanted to share them here, so you can all see how awesome they look and the great colour schemes and whatnot so check out getnail-d and Delaynee's versions! Now I want to do this mani in a million different colour schemes! Thanks ladies!

Sparkly Mermaid Nails

China Glaze Custom Kicks, China Glaze Blue Year's Eve, China Glaze Snow Globe, China Glaze Skyscraper (over Blue Year's Eve), OPI Mermaid's Tears, OPI Planks A Lot, Face of Australia White Gold.

I was in Sydney over the weekend and managed to do the fabulous Sculptures by the Sea walk, and man the ocean is lovely to look at! This is my attempt at 'mermaid nails'. They didn't really come out the way I wanted, and it seems I was slightly too eager in my top coat application. While I was in Sydney I desperately wanted to get OPI Zom-body to Love, just for the glow in the dark-ness, but it seems that it might not be available in Australia! To console myself I picked up the mini Muppets set and a regular size Rainbow Connection. I still really want the glow in the dark polish though!