Mermaid Manicure Tutorial

I hope you enjoyed my post yesterday, 5 simple ways to increase your blog traffic. If you missed it, have a look here.

I'm back today with a fun tutorial for a manicure that reminds me of a mermaid. There are some very cute mermaid-specific manicures knocking about on Pintrest, but I've been wanting to try this all-over dotting technique for a while, so here I am giving it a bash. Please feel free to ask any questions!

You'll need:

Three colours of nail polish that remind you of the sea. I've used Barry M 291, Colbalt Blue, Barry M 304, Mint Green and M & S Baby Blue.

A metallic polish. I've used Barry M 319, Foil Effects Silver.

A Bobby Pin bent out of shape

Teeny gems, I've used my trusty Anitas craft gems.

I really dislike the Mint Green, I don't think I'll ever get through the whole bottle. It reminds me of hospital gown colour. But it fit pretty well into this theme :-)

Paint 4 nails with your base colour (your least favourite) and one accent nail in your metallic. I've painted my index finger, I always use that for an accent nail.

Once that's dry, it's time to start blobbing. I've put out dabs of the colours on a piece of plastic.

Dip one end of your bobby pin in one colour. Start by doing three or four blobs across the very top of your nail.

Add your second colour, moving down the nail. Each dot should overlap another, as that what will give you a fishy-tail effect. You will have to wipe the bobby pin between each colour, or use one for each shade.

Use your metallic for the third colour and carry on dotting down the nail.

As you reach the bottom, do a half-moon guide with one of your colours.

 

 Dot your other colours up to and overlapping the guide, this will kind of hide it so it isn't so obvious.

 

Cute huh? I think we need a bit of sparkle though :-) Do both hands, you'll need to redo your little pools as the polish will probably go quite tacky after a few minutes.

I tipped out a little pile of gems in the sea colours that I had.

Paint a thick layer of clear polish over your accent nail. Using the other end of your bobby pin, dip it in the clear polish and wait a few seconds. This will make it tacky enough to pick up a gem with the very end, but it won't stick to it. Press the gems firmly into a half-moon using the end of the bobby pin.

The size of your gems verse the size of your nail will have a serious effect on how the final result looks. But you can't control it. So go with the flow and build up some layers of coloured gems. Why not try mixing it up also?

And wa-la! (I really say that, in actual real life.) Paint the whole accent nail with a very thin coat of clear polish and then finish off your other nails the same way.

I hope you like this tutorial! Feel free to post any of my images on Pintrest, but do ensure that they link back to here :-)