Sunday, May 13, 2012

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

Saturday, May 12, 2012

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

Friday, May 11, 2012

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




Thursday, May 10, 2012

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

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

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