Swirly Blob Nails

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Janelle

These nails are so easy and require pretty much no skill whatsoever. People never believe me when I stay stuff like that to them in real life, but 99% of the time, I really mean it!

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of how to get this effect on your nails, I’m going to ask you to please forgive my gross looking cuticles in this picture. I know they look gross and dry and polish-stained. You don’t need to tell me about it.

Okay, so for this look, you’ll need to pick out a few polishes in colors that will blend nicely with each other. I opted for a pale yellowish-green, a deep teal, and a silver glitter. I think if you pick more than 4 colors, it will just become a muddy mess on your nails.

After shaking up your polishes, just put a few drops of each polish on a nail polish safe surface. I used my Bliss Kiss Simply Neat Miracle Mat, but really, a plastic lid from pulled from your recycling bin will work just as well. Your drops of polish should be sort of touching and overlapping, but don’t think too hard about it. Just blob it on on there.

Then take a plastic cuticle pusher or a wooden orange stick or just about any little tool you have laying around the house (the eraser end of a pencil, a Popsicle stick,…) and dip it into your blob of polishes. Kind of try of get all of the polish colors onto your tool, but you don’t need to swirl them together or anything. Then just dab the polish onto your nails with your little tool. The polish will sort of swirl together while you’re dabbing it onto your nail. Don’t worry about trying to get it to be perfectly neat, because you can always clean up polish that accidentally gets on your skin and cuticles with some acetone and a little brush. (I always use my e.l.f concealer brush. It’s a great little brush and it’s only $1.)

Give your nails a good long time to dry, since you are applying a pretty thick layer of polish, and then top them with a top coat. I opted for a matte top coat, and the finished result reminded me of what play dough looks like when the colors get mixed together.

If you give this technique a try, please let me know! I’m on instagram and facebook, so find me and tag me so I can see. Thanks for reading and enjoy your summer!

Red and Green Christmas Nails

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Janelle

Hello, loyal subjects! Today I shall teach thee how to create these super festive Christmas nails!

I really had fun wearing these! They are pretty simple, but unmistakably Christmas-y.

Here’s what you need to do….

Start with a base coat like always, and then paint all of your nails except for your ring finger white. Apply a quick dry top coat to your middle finger. Now, we’re going to deal with every finger except the middle finger because we need to wait for the polish to get REALLY dry.

For your ring finger you will need some kind of red glitter polish. I used Funky Fingers – Ninny Muggins. To get the glitter fully opaque, I brushed some of the polish to a make-up sponge, waited for a few seconds for the base polish to be absorbed into the sponge, and then I dabbed the glitter onto my nail with the sponge. When you do this, almost all of the glitter will transfer from the sponge onto your nail. This allows you to build up the glitter to full opacity with out having too much of the thick clear base polish. You may need to do this a few times until you get enough glitter to fully cover your nail. I use this little trick whenever I want a really sparkly over-the-top glitter accent nail!

For your thumb, index finger, and pinky finger, take your largest dotting tool and add three or four dots to each nail. Space them out pretty well, so that you have room for some large red dots. And that there is your next step: take your largest dotting tool and add three or four large red dots to each nail. After you are done with your large dots, fill in any remaining space with smaller red and green dots. Really, there’s no science to this. Just fill things in the way you like them.

These polka dot nails look cute, right? Dots are always a great look! You might be seriously terrible at painting tiny designs on your nails with a detail brush, but get a few dotting tools, and you can make your nails look super cute!

Okay, onto the middle finger. You can always just paint a little free hand Christmas tree with a little brush. I decided to make it difficult, so I decided to make my own little Christmas tree stencil. I started just by sketching some little trees, mostly to figure out what size would fit best on my nail. It took some trial and error, but I finally figured out a good height and width for my little trees.

I then applied some painters tape to wax paper and folded it in half. I used my little drawn tree as a guide to trace half a tree onto the tape, with the crease running down the center of the tree. I then cut the tree out of the tape. This took a few tries to get right, but I had a whole roll of painters tape, and a whole roll of wax paper, so no worries. I eventually cut out two trees that were pretty similar! Huzzah!

Now we come to the most important step of all: wait for the white polish on your middle finger to dry COMPLETELY before you stick your tape stencil onto your nail. Bone dry. Like absolutely dry. This little picture shows what happens when you don’t wait long enough. Yeah, I know. Tragic. And once you do this, there’s just nothing you can do. You remove all of the polish from that nail and start the heck over. And you have to make another little Christmas tree tape stencil since you gooped one of them up. So that’s what I did. And this time I waited a REALLY long time for the polish to dry before I applied my tape stencil.

So once your white polish on your middle finger is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DRY, peel your little stencil from the wax paper and stick it to your nail. Make sure that your tree is centered on your nail, and press the painters tape down really well. You don’t want any of the polish to seep under the tape. Once you have your stencil where you want it, apply a generous coat of green polish over the stencil and then immediately and carefully peel the stencil off your nail. You will be rewarded for your patience with a cute little tree with nice crisp lines!

Apply a top coat to your nails and you are ready to go! Please let me know if you recreated this design. I’d love to see it!

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful holiday season!

Striped Irridescent Nails

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Janelle

Within the last week, I’ve seen at least four nail bloggers and/or youtubers talking about this fun new trend in nails art: shattered glass nails. They all say that this trend started in South Korea, and if everyone says it, it must be true. Like Wikipedia. If it’s on Wikipedia, it must be true. So I’m just going to say what everyone else is saying. This trend was stared in South Korea.

For the shattered glass effect, you pretty much take tiny triangles of iridescent tissue paper, and and apply them to your nails sort of randomly. It looks really cool, but I wanted to try something a little bit different, since everyone has been doing the little triangles thing. I opted for stripes. Here’s how I got this look.

The first thing I needed to do was get me some iridescent tissue paper. I checked around my little town first, but I had no luck, so I needed to head down the road a few miles to either a craft store or a party supply store. Even thought I had a coupon for Michael’s, I opted to go to Party City. In Party City, I can pretty much march right it, pick up the thing I need, pay for it, and get out. Michael’s will suck me in for two hours, and then I end up spending $150 on enough supplies to make a bar of soap and crochet a scarf for every single person I know. Plus maybe I want to take up beading and oil painting… Anyway, at Party City I got the smallest pack of iridescent tissue paper they had and it cost me $2.99. Make sure you actually get the iridescent stuff, and not just the clear stuff. It should shimmer pink and green. By the way, they call it iridescent tissue paper, but it’s not actually paper. It’s a really thin plastic type stuff. And I’m getting tired of typing out “iridescent tissue paper” so from now on, I’m just going to refer to it as ITP.

So, I got my ITP home and I cut off a little triangle that was about 2″ x 3″. In the end, I didn’t need nearly that much. I cut it into little thin strips, and then cut the strips into lengths that were about a half an inch, give or take.

I then painted my nails this dark berry color, Jordana – Hypnotizing. This particular polish dries darker than it appears in the bottle. I sort of liked the color in the bottle a little better, but it’s still super pretty. Really, any dark color will work for this look. A dark blue or green would look great, and black would work just fine, too. If you use a lighter polish, you’ll get a more subtle effect. ITP tends to reflect gold/green/blue when it’s over dark colors. Over light colors it reflects pink/gold.

While my purple polish was drying, I took one of my smallest dotting tools and dipped the end in wax from a candle I was burning. When the wax cools, it remains just tacky enough to pick up the pieces of ITP. This is actually a great little trick to pick up any little gems or glitter that you are trying to place on your nail. It gives you a lot of control, and in the end, the wax just wipes off the dotting tool. A toothpick dipped in wax would work just fine, too.

When my polish was pretty much dry, I applied a thick-ish coat of clear polish to one of my fingers. (I wouldn’t recommend using a quick dry top coat for this step. I think it would dry to quickly and you’d end up not really being able to get the strips of ITP to stick.) I then picked up a strip of ITP with my waxy dotting tool and placed it in the center of my nail. I then added a strip on each side. I pressed each strip down kind of firmly, but not too firmly. I then moved on to the next finger. Polish, strip, strip, strip. Next finger: polish, strip, strip, strip… You get the pattern, right?

By the time I was done with my 10th finger, the first finger I did was pretty much dry. I realized that my waxy dotting was leaving little wax smudges on the strips of ITP. (See the picture on the left.) Because the clear polish was pretty much dry at this point, I REALLY gently took a tissue and wiped down each nail. This took care of the wax smudges. Just be careful. You don’t want to mess up your work thus far! (See the picture on the right.)

I let them dry for a while, since I had so many coats of polish on at this point, but I eventually applied two layers of quick dry top coat. Even after both layers of top coat dried completely, I can still feel the ridges of the ITP strips, so I think I might be adding a third layer of top coat.

I’ve been out and about a little bit, and I’ve gotten so many comments on these nails! Seriously, they are quite show stopping! I’ve got a few more ideas I’d like to try out using ITP, and I’ll make sure I write about it when I do. Thanks for reading! Let me know if you try this look!

Monster of Frankenstein Nails

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Janelle

You know how facebook likes to show you what you posted several years ago on this same day? Well, a few days ago, this atrocity popped up on my timeline: I made the image nice and big so that you can see just how terrible it is. My black lines are terrible, apparently I’d never heard about clean up, and what’s with the grotesque hand pose? I felt like I needed to recreate this look, only better.

Here’s what I did:

I started with a base coat, of course. I’ve been using Rejuvacote for…. I’m not really sure. Six month, maybe? This is still my first bottle and I still have about half of it left. It had really helped the condition of my nails. They are just so much stronger and rarely peel anymore. It’s about $10, but that’s not bad at all considering how long a bottle lasts.

Next I applied a coat of a sheer nude colored polish. I think this is some old Mary Kay stuff that I’ve had for years and years. I don’t even remember buying it, so I’m not really sure how I ended up with it. I used this just to tone down the yellowness of my nails, but really, you can just skip this step if you feel like it.

I then applied some liquid latex around the sides of my nails. This is just to make clean up easier in the end. The stuff I use is actually hair glue and I got it for super cheap ($2 maybe) at Sally Beauty Supply. You could also use school glue instead. Whatever you use, just make sure you let it dry before you move on. Oh, here’s something that nobody ever mentions about liquid latex: it sticks to itself. So, if you have the sides of your fingers covered with latex (like I do in this picture), you have to be really careful that your fingers don’t touch each other. If the latex on one finger touches the latex on its neighboring finger, it will just stick together an pull right off one finger.

Next, I took orange, purple, and green polishes, and using the brushes in the bottles, I did two swipes on each nail to make a “V” shape. I started about halfway down the nail and just sort of dragged the brush, aiming for the opposing corner. If your lines aren’t perfectly straight, it’s not a big deal, because you’re going to go over them with black anyway.

I then went over each nail with a second coat to make sure that it was opaque. Oh, and I painted my ring finger solid green. It was at this point that I realized that I wouldn’t have had to put a coat of the nude polish on my ring finger or put latex on that finger either. Oh well. Stuff like that happens when you watch TV while you do your nails.

I then peeled off the latex. Use tweezers or an orange stick or something to remove the latex. Obviously, if you use your nails, you’re just going to mess stuff up.

As you can see, most of the extra polish came off with the latex, leaving just a little bit to clean up. I then used my little $1 elf concealer brush dipped in acetone to remove the little bit of remaining polish around my nails. Seriously, this is the best little brush. And it’s $1. Who doesn’t love good quality things that are also cheap? These little brushes last for a pretty long time, too, and when they finally do wear out, hey, they only cost $1 to replace. I usually get about 6 months use out of one of these brushes, and that’s doing my nails 2-3 times a week.

Okay, at this point, I got a little excited and sort of forgot to take pictures of each little step as I was doing it. I’ll talk you through it.

I used black acrylic (or craft) paint and a thin brush that I got at Michael’s to line the “Vs” on my nails. For my thumb, I started on the left side of my nail and painted a thin line to the point of the “V”. Then I started on the right side of my thumbnail and painted a thin line that I extended the whole way to the corner of my nail.

I then did the same thing on each finger (except for my ring finger), mirroring the design on each finger, just to keep it interesting looking. lastly, I went back and added the “stitches”. As you can see, I sort of added the stitches in pairs.

On my ring finger, started by making two black circles with my largest dotting tool right in the middle of my finger for the eyes. Using my little brush, I added hair, a mouth (with stitches), and eyebrows. I then took white paint on the same large dotting tool and added the whites of the eyes, being careful not to cover the entire black circle underneath it. Then I used a little dotting tool with black paint to add the pupils of the eyes. I pretty much did that immediately after I did the white dots, so the white paint was still wet. Then I let it dry for a while.

Because they eyes had so many layers of paint, they definitely sort of stuck out. After the eyes were dry to the touch, but not completely dried through (maybe 10 minutes), I carefully pressed the eyes down with my finger. Here’s a sideways shot of my finger after I smooshed the eyes down. Hopefully you can tell how I sort of flattened them.

I let them dry for a while longer before I added the top coat. I’d made the mistake in the past of not letting the acrylic paint dry completely before applying top coat, and it really shortens the lifespan of your manicure.

So here’s the final look! Much better than two years ago!

In case you’re wondering, the polishes I used are NYC – High Line Green, Sally Girl – Mango, and Ulta – Tinsel Town.

Well, that’s it! you’ve got one more day to paint your nails for Halloween, so get crackin’! Have a fun, safe, and smart holiday! Don’t do anything stupid!

Thanks for reading!

Fun With Painter’s Tape

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Janelle

We are in the process of redoing our living room. Right now we’re painting. I was actually supposed to be painting when I came up with these nails.

While I was getting ready to start painting, I saw a roll of painter’s tape laying there, and it hit me that painter’s tape should work really well to make my own nail vinyls. And it did! Here’s how I got this look…

First I picked out five polishes that I liked together and painted each finger a different color. Then, while my nails were drying, I took a piece of wax paper and stuck about a 10 inch piece of painter’s tape to it.

Then I took my zig-zaggy crafty scissors and snipped the tape into a bunch of little strips. When my nails were really dry, I stuck a strip of my zig-zag cut tape down the center of each nail.

Then, one nail at a time, I painted the sides of each nail a different color. I brushed a pretty thick coat down the sides of the nails because I wanted it to cover the polish that was underneath in one coat.

As soon as I painted both sides of the nail, I pulled up the painters tape with tweezers. You don’t want to wait until the polish is dry, or the polish will come up with the tape.

The colors on my nails look pretty random, but there actually is a pattern. I lined up my polishes in this order: pink, yellow, periwinkle, coral, green. For the sake of ease, let’s just number them 1 – 5. I painted my nails with colors 1-5, starting with my thumbs. on the sides of my thumbs, I used colors 2 and 3. On my first fingers, I used colors 3 and 4, on my middle fingers I used 4 and 5, on my ring fingers I used 5 and 1, and on my pinkies, I used 1 and 2.

I topped these with a quick dry top coat, and I loved how glossy they looked!

I sort of felt like the end result looked like a pinata, but I really liked it! The colors were soft enough to keep them from looking obnoxious. These nails actually got a ton of compliments and they really weren’t hard at all! I will definitely be using this technique in the future.

Thanks for reading! I hope this inspires you to fancy up your nails.

Rainbow Jelly Sandwich

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Janelle

I’m on a jelly sandwich kick. Ever since picking up Funky Fingers – Olaf, a white glitter topper in a clear base, I can’t stop thinking of ways that I want to use it in jelly sandwiches. You can read a little about my mad scientist experiments and the first time I used Olaf here.

What I love about this polish is that it’s all white glitter, except for a few tiny iridescent glitters. That means that you really get the true color of the jelly polish that you use to show on your nail. It seems like winter/Christmas polish collections where you see the most of these all white glitter toppers. Please comment below if you know of a white glitter topper that is available as part of a permanent collection. This particular polish is still available in 5 Below, but I’m guessing that when it’s gone, it’s gone.

Before making a big mess on my nails, I decided to do a little experimenting. I started by taking the back of a business card and making three horizontal stripes with a black polish, and two other almost black polishes. When the black/almost black dried, I put an iridescent topper on the left half and Olaf on the right half. When the toppers were dry, I made vertical stripes of purple, blue, green, and yellow jelly polishes. I find that doing something like this can help minimize those “this looked better in my head” moments.

What I discovered is that the colors of the jelly polishes really popped when painted over the white glitter, but not so much over the iridescent glitter. I also confirmed what I suspected: that if the polishes are in “rainbow order”, they blend perfectly when they are overlapped a little bit. I also discovered that I got the best effect when I used a true black polish for a base.

Tangent: Were any of you really into putting things in rainbow order as a kid? When I was a kid, that’s how everything was arranged: Legos, Skittles,… other colored stuff. Okay, back to the topic at hand.

So, i started with two coats of black polish followed by one coat of Olaf. It took a little bit of “fishing” to get the snowflakes out, but it wasn’t too bad.

The I started making stripes with these jelly polishes.

From left to right: Wet n Wild – Deception (No longer available. No one is sorrier than me), my Frankenjelly, Spoiled – Permission to Proceed, Spoiled – Did I Dye It Too Blonde?. The Spoiled polishes are made by Wet n Wild and are available exclusively at CVS for $1.99.

I applied as stripe of polish to each nail in the order that they are pictured, allowing the colors to overlap a little. Here’s the end result:

Aren’t they so fun? I was thrilled with how these turned out!

And you really don’t have to have a white glitter topper to pull off this look. You could just make a bunch of little random dots with white polish or craft paint over black polish. Or you could paint pretty much ant white design over black polish and then top it with rainbow jelly stripes for a really cool effect! If you try anything similar, please let me know! Thanks for reading!

Scrapbook Nails

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Janelle

You know how you can transfer newspaper print onto polished nails using rubbing alcohol? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google “newspaper nails.”) Well, I started to wonder if you could just transfer ink from any paper onto nails with alcohol. Specifically, I started thinking about how cool it would be to transfer the print from scrapbook paper onto nails. I mean, you can get a whole huge sheet of scrapbook paper for like, $0.59 at the craft store, which is way cheaper than any sort of nails stickers.

When I first started thinking about this, I did a little searching online to see if I could find any info anyone who had attempted something like this. I did find some people who had printed out digital scrapbook paper and successfully transferred it to their nails. I’m a little stingy with my printer ink, though, and so I didn’t really want to pay for downloadable scrapbook paper and then use a million dollars worth of ink to print it out. Plus, I wanted an excuse to go to the craft store. So that’s what I did.

I figured it would be best to use the thinner scrapbook paper instead of the really heavy-duty kind. I also looked for a pattern that was had some cool small detail, and here’s what I picked out:

Then I cut out some little nails-size pieces.

I painted my nails like this:

The pink is China Glaze – Peonies & Park Ave. It’s an almost-neon pink, and the more I wear it, the more it grows on me! I let my nails dry for about a half an hour before I moved onto the next step.

I poured a little rubbing alcohol into the lid.

After a little trial and error, I found that it worked best to dip the paper into the alcohol and then press it print side down onto my nail and hold it for about 30 seconds.

Really press it down well, especially around the edges of the nail. If it looked like it wasn’t transferring very well, I used a brush dipped in alcohol to re-wet the paper while it was on m nail and then I pressed it down a little longer.

Here was my first nail!

After removing the paper, there was often still some paper residue stuck on my nail.

To remove that, I just made a finger on my opposite hand wet and gently rubbed the nail. The paper residue would sort of pill up while I was rubbing it, and I could easily brush it off. I was really careful while I was doing this so that I didn’t rub too hard and remove the ink. Once all of the paper was rubbed off, I applied Seche Vite top coat.

Here are the finished nails on my right hand. Oh, I added some stars to my pink nails..

And here’s my l left hand:

While the ink didn’t transfer 100% perfectly, I am pretty happy with this first attempt! If you give this a try and figure out any tips along the way, please let me know. Make sure you post a picture on facebook or instagram and use the hashtag #polishmesnazzy so that I don’t miss it. Happy polishing !

Plaid Watermelon Nails

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Janelle

I’m not gotta lie; these took a long time. While I did these nails plus my toes (which you’ll see on Wednesday), I watched almost the entire Blackfish documentary plus two episodes of Seinfeld. (I needed to watch something a little lighter after Blackfish.) But aren’t they seriously cute?

The first think I need to do is give Jaunty Juli credit for the design. Her original version of this design is on her YouTube channel. You should check her out. She’s really good!

For this look, the only polish I used besides my base and top coat was a white. The rest of the color is actually acrylic craft paint. Craft paint is easier to work with than polish, it washes off with water, and it’s really cheap, like $.65 per bottle. Since they are water soluble, I just us a plate from my kitchen as a little pallet. Works like a charm. Just make sure you apply a top coat so you don’t wash your design off when you wash your hands. That would be tragic.

Here’s how I did them….

First I started with 2 coats of white polish:

Then I added thick crosses on each nail using light blue paint. (I actually took some blue I had on hand and mixed it with a little white paint to get the color that I wanted.) As you can see, I changed the placement of the lines on each nail just to sort of mix it up. You don’t nee to paint them the whole way to your cuticle since we are going to be adding the watermelons later.

I added some thin blue lines going vertically and horizontally wherever I had room.

I then took a darker blue paint and my littlest brush and darkened the spots where the lines intersect. This is what really makes the plaid look like plaid.

I added a few neon yellow stripes with paint where I could fit them in. In retrospect, I should have left a little more room for the yellow lines, but it’s all good. The yellow paint was pretty sheer, so it interacted nicely where it overlapped the blue to make a greenish shade.

Next I started to add the red paint over my half moon area on my thumb, but I quickly realized the my neon red paint was not going to cover the blue polish near my cuticles. I decided I needed to take white paint and cover up the blue paint where I wanted to paint the watermelons. (I’m not showing you my thumb, because it looked pretty messed up at this point.)

Then I took my red paint and filled in most of the half moon area, leaving a little room for the rind.

then I added a thin neon green stripe next to the red.

Then I added a little black and green together to make a darker green and added a final thin stripe to make the rind.

Can you tell I was using my palm to wipe my brush some at this point? Anyway, with my littlest brush, I added in some black seeds and then applied a top coat.

Here’s what they looked like the next day in natural light where you can see the neon-ness a little better:

Please let me know if you try these! I’d love to see your recreations on facebook or instagram! Oh, and check out Jaunty Juli on YouTube or instagram, too!

Mannequin Hands… And Then I Added Stuff.

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Janelle

I while back, I went on a quest to find my perfect “mannequin hands” polish. By that I mean a polish that was as close to a perfect match to my skin as I could find. I had heard that Deborah Lippmann had a polish called Naked that was a good match for a lot of people who are fair like me, so I checked it out at Sephora. Yep, it’s a great nude shade that was a really close match to my skin, but you know what? Deborah Lippmann polishes cost $20 and I absolutely refuse to spend $20 on a single polish. Nope, I’m never going to do it. I can’t imagine any possible scenario in which I would spend $20 on a single polish. If I’m spending $20 on polish, you’d better believe that I’m going to be getting like, 10 bottles for that price. Okay, let me get back on track…

So, this one time I was at Kmart and I spotted a color that I had never noticed before from NCY from the In A New York Minute line called Fashion Safari. I did that thing that you’re not supposed to do (even though everyone does it) and opened up the bottle in the store. I had polish on my nails already, so I just brushed a tiny bit of the polish onto the back of my hand and it blended right in! best of all, it cost under $2! I feel bad for the suckers who buy Deborah Lippmann Naked when there’s NYC Fashion Safari in the world. Anyway, here it is with a matte top coat:

Fun, right? My hand really almost looks like a mannequin’s, right? By the way, this is the color I used for the sand colored nails in my Beach Inspired Nail Art. In that tutorial, I actually painted my sister’s nails and her skin is definitely a shade or two darker than mine. It’s a little hard to tell in the picture, but in person, you could definitely see that Fashion Safari was lighter than my sister’s skin. I also used it in my Real Seashell Nails with a pearly color shifting polish over top.

Well, my mannequin hands fascinated me for about 24 hours, and then I decided that I needed to add something to them. I opted for some of the chunky glitter that is Funky Fingers Pep Rally and I ended up with this look:

I didn’t actually just brush the glitter onto my nails. I used a little dotting tool to pick the individual pieces of glitter off the brush and placed them where I wanted them. It’s a little time consuming, but not very hard. I also opted to top them with Sech Vite, since it’s thick enough to smooth out this really chunky glitter.

That’s it for today! As always, thank you for liking, following, and sharing! Come find me on instagram and facebook!

Beach Inspired Nail Art

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Janelle

Here in PA, we have about one more month to sport overtly beachy nails, so let’s get to it! I am still digging my current mani, so I asked my little sis if I could borrow her nails for this little tutorial. Here’s the finished product:

For this look, you will need polishes in these colors: White, light blue, darker blue, coral, nude, gold glitter.

Specifically, I used (left to right): Wet N Wild -French White Creme, Wet n Wild Megalast – I Need a Refresh-Mint, Jordana – Boy Oh Boy, Wet n Wild – Blazed, NYC – Fashion Safari, La Colors – Dizzy. (Yeah, my bottle of Blazed got into a fight with a bottle of grey polish inside my suitcase on a flight. The grey bottle lost.)

You will also need a disposable plastic container like a yogurt cup, Q-tips, a dotting tool, a makeup sponge, acetone or nail polish remover, and a pitcher. The first thing you want to do is fill the pitcher with a quart of water and let it come to room temperature. Seriously, that’s a real step in this process, but more about that later.

To begin, paint the thumb, index, and pinky fingers with the nude color to look like sand. Then paint the middle and ring fingers light blue:

Let them dry for 5 or 10 minutes. Then, in order to make clean up easy in the end, tape around the fingers with the blue polish. You’ll need two pieces of tape per finger: one about 2 inches long, the other about one inch long. Take the longer piece of tape and place the center of it across the tip of your finger (behind your nail) and then press it down along the sides of your finger. Then take the shorter piece and wrap it around your finger just below your cuticle.

Then apply a coat of the glitter polish to your sand-colored nails.

The next thing you’re going to do is give your blue nails an ombre/gradient effect. Take a makeup sponge and apply some of the darker blue polish to it.

Then start dabbing the sponge lightly at the very tip of the light blue nails. As the polish begins to dry on the sponge, continue dabbing about halfway up the nail. Work carefully and don’t get too crazy here. It’s easy to add more dark blue polish to the nail if you need to, but if you sponge too vigorously and get too much dark blue polish on the nail, there’s not much you can do to fix it. Here’s what it should look like after this step:

Pretty, right?

Next, take your small disposable container and fill it with your room temperature water. I just pulled a yogurt container out of my recycling bin. (What you do not want to use is a Styrofoam cup. Nail polish will eat through Styrofoam and leave you with a big mess.)

Then, take your white polish and drop a drop of polish onto the surface of the water. It should spread out like this:

If your drop of polish falls to the bottom of the container, you are holding your brush too far above the surface of the water. If your polish doesn’t spread out like this, the problem is either the water or the polish. If your water is too warm or too cool, the polish won’t spread. Also, I just used tap water, but I know that some people claim that bottled water works better for this technique because it doesn’t have that extra stuff that can be in tap water. There’s also a possibility that your polish just doesn’t want to spread. Different formulas do spread on the water differently. Any sort of quick dry polish is going to dry on the surface of the water too quickly for you to be able to work with it. My $1 Wet n Wild worked well, so get yourself a bottle of that.

Now, spritz the polish that is floating on the water with an alcohol based spray from a distance of about 8 inches. I used some old Bath & Body works stuff. As you can (hopefully) see (in my crappy picture), this will cause the polish to break up.

Next, dip your two blue fingers into the container and just hold them there. I need to mention that this all needs to be done quickly. The polish will begin to dry really quickly as soon as it spreads out on the water, so as soon as it spreads out, spray it, and within a few seconds of spraying the polish, dip your fingers in there.

While your fingers are still underwater, blow on the surface of the water to dry the remaining nail polish. Then while your fingers are still underwater, take a Q-tip and gather up all of the polish that’s still floating on the surface of the water. You will be able to just sort of spin your Q-tip in the water and it will collect the polish. Now it’s safe to pull your fingers out.

Now you can see the reason for the tape. It’s to keep all of that extra polish for sticking to your fingers, which will make cleanup a lot easier.

Just a little side note: If this whole messing with water thing just seems a little overwhelming, the middle and ring fingers would also look great with some blue, white, or sliver glitter polish instead.

Now it’s time to deal with our sand colored nails. Take a dotting tool or toothpick dipped in your coral polish and make some starfish. Use a stippling motion as you make each of the five starfish legs. Starfish are sort of lumpy and irregular looking, so don’t worry if they don’t look perfect. When the coral polish dries, go back and add some tiny white dots down each of the legs.

Now that you’ve given your fingers a little time to dry, carefully take the tape off of your Tweezers may help here.

Top everything off with a good, shiny quick dry top coat like Seche Vite. After your nails have had a minute or so to dry, it’s time to clean up the extra white polish around your middle and ring fingers. I like to use a little brush dipped in acetone. Pure acetone is strong stuff, and it’s really drying to your hands and nails, but it gets the job done.

The little brush I use is the e.l.f. concealer brush. It works really well and it only costs $1. In a pinch you can use a Q-tip, but it’s harder to get in really close to the edge of the nail.

And here’s the finished look!

If you give this a try, I’d LOVE to see your recreations! You can post a picture on our Polish Me Snazzy facebook page, or use the hashtag #polishmesnazzy on instagram so I can see your work! Thanks for reading!

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