Spring Time Flowers

I started off with China Glaze Peachy Keen as my base colour. In person it's more of a light peach than an orange like in the photo.

Next I used my OPI Alpine Snow (it's starting to become a favourite colour of mine). I took my nail art brush and added small dots to my nails.

After adding the white dots, I took my teal and black stripe right nail colours to add the petals of the flowers. I used the black to outline them.

There you have it! Finish off with a top coat and you're good to go :)

I used the teal on the peach colour and it really stood out, I really loved this nail.

Thanks for reading!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox

Nautical Nonsense

One of the big trends of the past few seasons has been nautical! Here's how to get the perfect nail to match those cute striped shorts!

Step 1:

I started off with OPI Alpine Snow and Essie Mesmorized. This Essie colour is one of my favourite blues!

Step 2:
On the white nails I painted red strips, and on my pinky I painted white stripes.

Step 3:

Next I added two anchors and a top coat!

The only thing with this nail is the concentration and a steady hand. It's really easy to make stripes look... not so stripy, so take your time!

Thanks for reading!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox

Stripes

So if you guys don't know already, stripes are my favourite pattern. I have about 6 shirts with stripes on them...

I decided for this May long weekend to do a colourful striped nail, perfect for a summer weekend like this!

Step 1:

First you want to choose the colour pallet you want to use for your stripes. You can choose black and white, bright, neon, pastel, all of one colour, anything you want! I decided to use 5 bright colours.
OPI The "It" Colour
OPI Fly
OPI You're a Pisa Work
Misa Nail Art Relax Don't Do it
Essence Lime Up!

After applying the all important base coat, take a nail art brush (I bought mine from Sally Beauty Supply) and draw small stripes on your nails. I chose about two stripes of the same colour per nail.Try to keep the stripes the same size. This takes a steady hand to do, but once you get the hang of drawing the stripes it gets easier and easier.

Step 2:

This is what your nails will look like after your first coat of stripes. This is a time consuming nail, so make sure you have time to do this! Each stripe has to be individually painted... twice!

Step 3:

Add your favourite top coat and there you have it! Bright and summery stripes for this May long weekend :)

Enjoy!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox

Tribal Print

Now this nail is definitely one of the hardest and most time consuming I've done.

BUT IT LOOKS AWESOME! Let's jump right in...

Step 1:

Start off by painting your nails a base colour of white. I used OPI Alpine Snow. The white helps your other colours pop without adding numerous coats.

Step 2:

Now here's where it gets a little tricky. Take your black nail art polish and draw a few tribal outlines on your white nails. Tribal art is a lot of straight lines and triangles. If it helps, you can reference a picture like I've mentioned in earlier posts. You have to have a very steady hand to do this. Because you're drawing on white it's hard to erase your mistake.

Step 3:

It's time to add some colour! I chose bright colours for this because I feel that the colours should pop off your nails! Pick a few nails to put the colour on, you don't have to put the same colour on every nail! I used OPI The "it" Colour (which I just added to my collection). To achieve the small lines I took a small nail art brush and dipped it into the polish. Don't use the actual polish brush... it's WAY to big.

Step 4:

Next I look OPI Fly (from the Nicki Minaj collection) and did the same thing that I did with the yellow. Be as creative as you want! Nothing is wrong when doing tribal, it's all your own design.

Step 5:

Add the rest of the colours you'd like to use. I've also added OPI In my Back Pocket, OPI Panda-monium Pink and Essence Lime Up!.

Step 6:

Finish up by repainting your black lines to clean up your nail. Then add your favourite top coat and you're done!

Now for me this took about an hour, waiting for things to dry and being super careful. It takes a lot of practice to get a really stead hand (for both your right and left), but practice makes perfect! The more you do your nails, the better you'll get!

Thanks for ready :)

Lots of Love,

Mackenzie xox

A Walk on the Wild Side: Fish Scales

We've come to the final part of our African Safari.

This last post, is about how to draw fish scales on your nails! Now I know that fish don't really live in Africa... but they're still cool none the less!

Step 1:
Choose your palet of colours. For this one I choose to use blues and greens. Now, you're going to want to use atleast 6 different colours if not more for your fish scales or else you'll have colours over lapping and it won't look as good!

Step 2:

Start at the tip of your nail. Draw dots slightly overlapping each other, using different colours. Make sure you don't touch the same colours together.

Step 3:

Continue building up the different coloured dots. Each row of dots should slightly overlap the row below it.

Step 4:

Finish off the nail with your last row of dots at your cuticle. Add your favourite top coat and you're done!

Fish scales are probably one of the easiest nails to do, they just take a lot longer because of each individual dot.

And there you have it! Our African safari is complete and hopefully you all have completely WILD nails!

Thanks for sticking with me these 5 days!

Lots of Love,

Mackenzie xox

A Walk on the Wild Side: Tiger Print

We've now reached Part 4 of our 5 part safari!

Today we're going to be looking at tiger print. This is truly one of my favourite things to paint on my nails because it just looks so cool!

Step 1:

Choose an orange nail polish as your base colour. I chose OPI In my Back Pocket for my tiger. It's bright, but not pylon bright!

Step 2:

Next you'll want to take a gold nail polish. I used Misa Nail Art: Gold Rush for this. Make sure you wipe most of the excess nail polish of the brush before you do this step. You don't want to add a huge glob of gold; more like subtle hints. Take a few quick swishes of the brush to create this effect.

Step 3:

Now it's time for the stripes! Take your black nail art polish and quickly brush stripes on to the orange and gold background. Use the same technique as you would for making zebra print!

Finish off with your favourite top coat and you're as fierce as ever!

One more animal to go!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox

A Walk on the Wilde Side: Leopard Print

Here's Part 3 of my African Safari!

Today we're going to be looking at the Leopard and it's spots! Now there's a difference between leopard print and cheetah print. Leopards have larger spots that are more spaced out, cheetahs have smaller spots and their more concentrated! I find the leopard print is easier to do because you don't have to be so precise with the spots.

Here we go!

Step 1:

Paint your nails a pale yellow colour... As you can see I forgot to take a picture of the colour I used. I used a pale yellow colour by Borghese, which doesn't have a name. Who doesn't name their nail polish colours?

Step 2:

Next take a gold colour nail polish. It could be a dark gold or a light one. I used Misa Nail Art: Gold rush. With the gold polish paint spots on your nail. They don't have to be uniform in any way. They can be large, small, fat, skinny. You choose! The more diverse the spots, the more real it looks.

Step 3:

After you've painted the dots on your fingers take a black nail polish, I used stripe rite in black, and draw small semi circles around the outside of each spot. They should be as messy as you can make them!

It helps to also look at photos of leopard spots while you paint your nails. Looking at what they should look like really helps you to recreate them on your nails!

I hope you all are enjoying our wild ride on this African Safari!  I've still got two more days of animal posts for you guys so keep coming back!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox

A Walk on the Wild Side: Giraffe Print

It's now time for Part 2 of my 5 part nail blog!

Tonight it's all about the giraffes. So as you may or may not already know, while I was on vacation in Arizona I was able to feed a giraffe!

I decided that for the little african safari we're taking, to show you guys how to get a sweet giraffe print on your nails!

It's very simple.

Step 1:

Start off by painting your nail a shade of yellow. Now for mine I didn't have the shade of yellow I wanted in a regular bottle so I had to use one of my Misa Nail Art bottles! This is Misa Nail Art: Crazy Banana.

Step 2:

Next I used Misa Nail Art: Gold Rush to add rectangular like shapes on my nails. It's hard to find dark brown nail polish in nail art form so I decided to use gold. Plus it looks more glamorous :)


Step 3:

Now this step is mandatory but I love sparkles so I had to add some! I took Misa Nail Art: Viva Las Vegas and drew over the gold spots I just made. I made sure to leave a tiny bit of gold showing around the edges to give it a 3D look.

Finish off with your favourite top coat and you're done!

Tomorrow we'll be heading into big cat territory.

Lots of Love,

Mackenzie xox

A Walk on the Wild Side: Zebra Print

So here's my FIRST of FIVE posts! I decided to do a whole "wild animal" theme for the week :)

Up first is the Zebra.

This is the easiest of the five nails that I'm going to show you.

To start off make sure you always put on a base coat! I use OPI's Natural Nail Base Coat.

Step 1:

Choose a white nail polish for the base colour. I chose OPI's Alpine snow. I find this is the best white nail polish that I've used. It goes on in two coats and it's not streaky.

Step 2:

Take a black nail art polish and draw a stripe or two on your nail. It doesn't matter how good it looks because you'll be able to draw more around it. Try to do this with a steady hand because it's hard to get the black off the white if you mess up.

Step 3:

Add more stripes on the nail. Vary from small and large, thick and thin. Remember no zebra has the same stripes! So you should change it up nail to nail.

Make sure you seal in the stripes with a top coat or else the black will scratch off.

Thanks for reading and good luck!

Lots of love,

Mackenzie xox