Textured Dotted Nails

I'm back!

I really don't have an excuse for this, except that I have for the most part moved my nail art enterprises to Instagram, where I post as @coralpecan. I find this much easier as I work 50 hour workweeks and usually am so drained when I get home that the idea of blogging is somewhat unbearable. However, today I made an effort, so let me show you a design I did earlier today.

You will need:

A base and topcoat. Mine are Butter London's nail foundation and Orly's matte top coat.

You will also need dotting tools in various sizes. Mine I got at Sally's for about $2 USD, and this is the largest and the medium size. They are double ended so they have a small dotter on the other end.

Here is my color scheme: Orly "Gumdrop" OPI "Just Lanai-ing Around" Kleancolor "Neon Blue" Revlon "Enchanting" and Sally Hansen "Mellow Yellow."

To begin, I painted each finger a different color, and put my matte topcoat over that base color. On top of that I did my dots and flowers. This gives it a 3D, textured effect.

The final product:

Just keep adding dots to fill as much negative space as you can, and pick a really great complementary color scheme. Have fun!

-Emmy

Blue and Green Geometric Nails

I was inspired to do these nails when I saw a version of them in black and aqua on the girl helping me at Sephora the other day. Hers were aqua on black, so I decided to make mine my own by doing the dots in blue, the stripes in green and a textured accent nail.
I painted 4 of my nails white with Revlon "Sure Thing" and my accent nail with Essie "Lots of Luxe." I did my green stripes vertically on my thumb and horizontally on my middle finger with an L.A. Colors green striper. I used a bobby pin as a dotting tool and did a small diamond on my pinkie and a larger one on my index finger. That color is "Crystal Eyes" by SpaRitual.

Holiday Nail Art for Short Nails

Here is a very simple design for a holiday party or other event you can do with just a few colors of polish. I am with my family for the holidays, so I don't have any stripers, nail art pens or dotting tools, and only the few colors I keep here when I visit. So really, this is the perfect traveling for the holidays manicure.
The colors I used are Revlon "Sure Thing" (the white), NYC "Chelsea" (the red) and Claire's "Tin Man" (the silver). I painted a white base, then added 3 stripes of the red polish to my nail, two on the left and right edges and one in the middle. Then I filled in the empty spaces with the silver polish. The lines can be varying lengths, it really doesn't matter if they're all about the same or not. It's also really helpful to use a pretty dry brush to have the best control when placing the polish.

Winter Texture Nails

Here is a cool not really nail art design that;s mostly a gray shimmer with a few textural elements of interest. I painted 4 of the five nails with Julep "Devon" and the fifth with L'Oreal's "The Reign of Studs." It's a really cool purple textured polish that doesn't need any colored base beneath. As for the ring finger texture, that is a feather! I got the Ciate feather manicure kit form a friend, but you could use your own (Clean) feather. Just put down a base color, put some topcoat on that, stick the feather to the topcoat, trim it down and add more topcoat on top. Awesome!

Thanksgiving NOTD

These were my nails of the day (NOTD) for thanksgiving. A really simple rose gold look with rhinestones. To begin, I painted my nails with a basecoat, then "Dancing Nails" by Sinful Colors and "Shimmering Shale" by Mineralfusion. Never in my entire 4.5 years of studying geology have I ever seen a rose gold, glittery shale, but I digress. It's a really pretty glitter. Then I just added the black and gray rhinestones to the bottom of each nail. Easy.
This look is festive and fancy, but definitely not specific to the winter holiday season. Any kind of special occasion where it's okay to get a little bit tacky works with these nails.

Easy Snowflake Nails

These nails aren't explicitly "Holiday," just kind of wintery, which I think is okay for this early in the holiday season. The dark blue I used is Sally Hansen "Blue it" and the light blue is Essie "Bikini so teeny." I alternated dark and light blue the way I did because I thought too much of the dark metallic blue would overpower the look. To draw my white snowflakes/ stars, I made an X on my nail, then a plus sign. I find that works better somehow. Then I alternated between a half moon snowflake and a nail tip snowflake with a black nail art pen on the light blue nails. I think it looks fine without any glitter, but a silver glitter accent instead of a snowflake on one of your nails would be cool also.

Black Lace Nails

Here is a simple line drawing design that looks great on all fingers, a few fingers or an accent nail. You could really use any color, but I think a nude base looks best with a black lace design. The color I used was "Shari" by Julep.
To begin, I drew some diagonal lines perpendicular to each other on one corner of the nail for a cross hatching effect. Then I added a scalloped line closer to the center of my nail. To embellish, I added dots on the outside of the scallop and clusters of 3 lines on the highest amplitude parts of the scallop. If you are using a nail art pen and not a striper or toothpick to make your design, it's very important to seal the design with topcoat, or it will rub off! I used O.P.I's regular finish topcoat on mine.