Recent Nail Art Tutorials

Hi guys :) Today's post is just a quick one to leave you two nail tutorial videos I filmed this weekend. I plan on uploading more so feel free to subscribe if nail art interests you :)

Easy DIY Floral Nail Art Tutorial



Monkeying Around Nail Art Tutorial




Hope you enjoyed :) If you have any questions or requests for nail art tutorials feel free to leave me a comment somewhere and I'll get back to you.

Thanks for reading and watching!

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachel.soshedances@gmail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com
YouTube: soshedancesxo

On Trend: Floral & Geometric Nail Art Tutorial

Evening everyone :) I'm sure you all know by now that I'm a bit obsessed with nail art. You're unlikely to see me out and about without some pretty pattern adorning my fingertips and my love for nail art tends to spill over onto this blog. Today is no different as I bring you a totally 'on trend' nail tutorial...

Floral patterns and prints are always 'in' during the spring, but this year it also seems that clear cut shapes and geometry are also 'in' too. It seems like every blogger and their dog are enjoying a good triangle whether it be on their clothes, their jewellery, their accessories or, now, their nails. Creating this nail look is surprisingly easy to do and I'm going to show you how to create that blue nail design on the right. The process of creating the design on the left is exactly the same, just with different colours :)

You will need:

1x base coat
1x light pastel blue (I used Rimmel's Sweet As Sugar)
1x medium pastel blue (I used 17's Heartbeat)
1x white (I used Rio's white nail art pen)
1x medium to dark green (I used Rio's green nail art pen)

Step 1:

Give your nails a base coat and allow it to dry. Then give them one coat of your light pastel blue colour and allow it to dry.

Step 2:

Give your nails a second coat of your light pastel blue and allow to dry. If you feel it necessary, then add a third coat.

Step 3:

Take your white and draw a V shape starting from the top corners of your nail. The easiest way to do this is by drawing two straight lines that meet in the middle. I used a nail art pen with a thin brush, but you could use a cocktail stick/tooth pick or dotting tools if you don't have one. 

Step 4:

Immediately follow this by filling in the V you've created with the same colour (so in this case, white) until you have a fully coloured-in triangle.

Step 5:

When the white has dried sufficiently, take your medium pastel blue colour and roughly create some dots over the white.

Step 6:

Follow this by taking your white and swirling it inside the dots you have just created.

Step 7:

Now go back to your medium pastel blue and swirl it over the white. When doing this, make sure you don't cover up all of the white.

Step 8:

Finally, add the 'petals' of your flowers by creating tiny green lines coming out of the sides of your flowers. Allow the nails to dry before adding a top coat, then you're done!

As you can see from the slightly 'edgier' design that I'm currently wearing, you can also change the position of the triangles to break things up a bit. That is, if triangles and flowers aren't varied enough already ;)

Hope you enjoyed :) Have you ever sported a floral nail design? Do you think you'd like to? Let me know in the comments below :) I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachel.soshedances@gmail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

NOTD: Geometric & Arty

Let me just preface all of this by saying that this design took hours. Literally. And whilst I love it I'm not entirely sure I'll be trying it again anytime soon. If you have the time though, go for it.

Recently I've been going through a bit of a phase with my nails where everything bores me. I'm not one to buy into the trends (feather nails, concrete nails, leather nails etc) but I do like to keep things fresh by trying out different nail art designs. I had a few spare hours a couple of nights ago and decided to give this a try.

To complete the design, I used a small paintbrush and drew on little triangles. I used one colour at a time, so the patterns built up over time and I wasn't constantly needing to wash my brush. The shapes aren't perfect, but I kind of feel it adds to the design a little and for a first attempt, I'm pleased at how it turned out. 

What's on your nails at the moment? Are you a fan of nail art? Let me know in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

An Experiment: Ombre Nails

So, I tried ombre nails this weekend. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about them even though they're now gone and I'm wearing Barry M's Blood Orange. 

First off, aren't they messy to do?! I ended up dunking a make up sponge into polish on a paper plate to get it right. And even then it's impossible to make the nail look neat because the sponge is never going to be nail shaped. 

To create this look, I coated my nails in Essie's 'Blanc' until I was pleased with how opaque it was, then I dipped the sponge into the polish (which I had in stripes next to each other on a paper plate) and gently pressed it onto and round the nail. I had to repeat this on most nails because the sponge absorbs the polish. 

I like the effect it gives, but really I do think it was a bit of a let down. I tried out loads of pastel colour combinations and this gave the best effect. I think brighter colours would definitely suit this style for the summer (if we have one here in snowy Britain...) but I didn't fall in love with the concept.

What do you think? Have you ever tried this out? Were you a fan? Let me know in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

'The Killing' Nail Tutorial

(If you have a bit of a thing about blood, I apologise for today's main photograph, though it might help to know that in actual fact, it was red food colouring on my back lawn... No blood was involved at all...)

So... hands up if you've ever heard of The Killing? Now leave your hands up if you've ever watched it? If you failed to raise your hand at all, or indeed withdrew it for the second question, then I urge you to try it. Arguably one of Denmark's best exports, The Killing (aka Forbrydelsen) is a crime thriller spanning three series that follows the fabulous Sarah Lund as she solves seemingly impossible murders and kidnappings. It's fascinating, and Lund is a character of such depth that you're drawn in without even realising. In fact, I kind of wish I could be her...

In fashion circles, Lund (and indeed The Killing) is most famous for her brilliantly Scandinavian jumpers, which are so popular now that Sofie Gråbøl (AKA Lund) presented one to the Duchess of Cornwall. If you are yet to bask in the glory of her jumpers, here is an example...

Even though I now own a Lund-esque coat and bag, I am still obviously not an uber-talented Danish crime fighter. I also am not willing to pay over £100 for a jumper. So, I decided to incorporate a little bit of the show into my nails...

I have to say, they're not the neatest nails I've ever shown on here, but I wanted to show you all anyway and it's such an easy design...

You will need:

1x base coat
1x top coat
1x white polish
1x black polish or nail art pen/paint

Step 1:

As usual, prepare your nails by filing, clipping, trimming or whatever you choose to do to maintain them, and then apply your base coat. This will protect your nails from the colour you're about to apply and stop them staining.

Step 2:

Apply your first coat of the white polish. You will need to do this more than once, so make sure each coat is dry before adding another. Add as many coats as you need for the colour to become opaque.

Step 3:

Starting at the tip of the nail, draw two small sideways hearts, one on each edge (you can see this in the photo above). You can do this by creating two dots of black and then joining them together in a kind of 'v' shape. Follow this by drawing a circle between these hearts.

Step 4:

Now, in the middle section of your nail, you need to draw four small hearts in the pattern that can be seen in the photo below...

Step 5:

Repeat the process of step 3 by adding the same pattern at the base of your nail and allow your nails to dry completely. Because you're using black, I'd even recommend for a full 24 hours if possible.

Step 6:

Apply your top coat. Be careful here, as seemingly dry black polish can often smudge when you apply a top coat.

Et voila! You now have fabulous Forbrydelsen themed nails. Obviously you don't have to be a fan of the show to try out this design, but it certainly helps ;)

What do you think? Can you see yourself trying out this design? Let me know in the comments below! :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

Requested: Nail Tutorial - Art Attack

Hi guys :) Today's post is going to be a requested tutorial of the nail art I posted about most recently. My usual 'hand model' (AKA my mum, haha) was unavailable so I've done it on an acrylic nail, hopefully you'll still be able to follow it though :)

So, you will need:

- 1x base coat (not pictured)
- 1x top coat (I used Sally Hansen Mega Shine)
- 1x white nail polish 
- As many other colours as you want to go in your pattern. I recommend the colours pictured to create the same effect as I did, and will refer to these colours in my tutorial. 
- 1x paintbrush (as cheap as possible, you'll see why later on)
- 1x nail polish remover and cotton pads

Step 1:

Apply your base coat and allow to dry. This is particularly important with a polish such as a white one, as they can often leave yellowing on the nails without a base coat being applied first.

Step 2:
Coat your nails with the white polish until they become opaque. Make sure you allow each coat to dry before re-applying, as you could end up pulling the drying polish and ruining the nails.

Step 3:
Take your paintbrush and yellow polish and lightly dab the end of the paintbrush onto the nail polish brush. You could try dipping the brush into the polish, but chances are you will end up with too much polish and will need to start over. Paint from one corner of the nail outwards and feather the ends out as much as possible.

Step 4:

Now take your orange colour and layer it over the yellow, trying to blend the two colours together as much as possible. Don't worry about it looking messy, this will be covered up later in the design.

Step 5:

Now take your bright pink and do the same as in step 4. In addition to this, you want to try and feather this colour out even more than you have previously. You can do this by pressing the brush against the nail.

Step 6:

Now we're going to introduce a slightly darker colour. Use your blue (I used something in between bright and dark, you don't want to go too dark) in the same way as your previous colours.

Step 7:

You're going to add some black now, just to give the pattern a bit more depth. Try not to feather this out too much, as these nails are mainly supposed to be colourful.

Step 8:

If you saw my original post, you might have noticed that red was the most prominent colour. This is the stage where you need to add the red. Don't be afraid to use a lot of this, however make sure you don't try and make the colour opaque. 

Step 9:

To darken the nails even further, add some green, and finally add some purple.

Step 10:

You're pretty much done with adding the colour now, however if you want to add any more of the colours you've already applied, feel free to do this and allow the nail to dry. In the photo below, I added more blue and yellow

Step 11:

Once the nail is dry, apply your top coat and you're done!

Overall, I don't think this tutorial is complicated to do, but it does take a bit of time and I wouldn't recommend you try doing this when you're in a hurry. I think this design could be mixed up so much for different seasons, occasions etc, and when I come back to it in the future I'll post some more NOTDs for you :)

I hope that was helpful, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment, tweet me or send me an email, the links are all at the end of this post :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Bring Out the Bunting Nail Tutorial

So, dear readers, Christmas is over and we're now officially in January 2013. This means that I'm already looking forward to spring and cute pastel designs being everywhere again. In anticipation of this, I have another nail tutorial for you all today :)

Who doesn't love a good bit of bunting? I know I do, so I thought I'd experiment a little with bunting and nail art, and since the results pleased me I thought I'd share. 

To create this 'look', you will need:

• 1x base coat
• 1x plain white nail polish
• 1x matte top coat (I used the George at Asda one)
• 1x plain black nail polish OR nail art pen (I used my black Rio nail art pen) 
• As many pastel nail polishes or nail art pens as you like... I think I ended up using 8 different colours (I'll be doing a post talking about the lilac, blue and green soon)
• If you're using polishes and not pens, you might want to get hold of a dotting tool or something similar (I used a dotting tool similar to these, which were a fabulous and much appreciated Christmas present from my lovely friend Sophie)

Step 1:

Start off, as always, by applying your base coat. This will protect the nails from being stained by the nail polish, and since you'll be using a white polish (which can have a tendency to leave yellowing on the nail) it's extra important to make sure you don't skip this step.

Step 2:

Apply as many coats of your white polish as you need for it to become opaque but make sure you allow them all to dry before applying the next coat. If you don't, the still-tacky polish will drag and you'll have to start over. 

Step 3:

Take your black polish/nail pen and draw on lines like you can see in my photo. These are effectively the strings that hold the bunting up. I think my lines are perhaps slightly too thick, so try going for thinner lines if you like :)

Step 4:

When your black lines have tried, take your dotting tool/nail art pen and draw on your tiny little triangles, as also seen in the above photo. You could just use two colours and alternate them, or like me you could use lots and use them in a random order. Don't worry about accidentally going onto the black line a little, we'll clear that up in a minute.

Step 5:

Allow your triangles to dry then if you have any overlapping onto the black lines, take your black polish/pen and just go over the lines once more. This is also the stage where you can tidy up any triangles that are slightly misshapen or not fully opaque.

Step 6:

Leave your nails to dry. I'd recommend at least half an hour because in my experience, applying a top coat too soon after doing detailed nail art just means that the pattern gets dragged in the direction you're applying the top coat. So, make sure you're confident your pattern won't be ruined, and apply your matte top coat. You could just apply a regular, shiny top coat, but I found that the shine on the nails somehow distracted from the pattern. This is less so with them being matte :)

Et voila! Pretty, spring-ready bunting nails. This is something that you could do with any colour, too, so it's very versatile and could probably carry through all of the seasons. Let me know in the comments if you've ever tried bunting nails or if you think you'll try them out now :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Nordic Christmas Nail Tutorial

God jul, everybody! That's what you'd tell people in Sweden at Christmas, and today I'm bringing you a cute Scandinavian/Nordic inspired nail tutorial that is perfect for this Christmas...

You will need:

1x red nail polish - I used Rimmel's I <3 Lasting Finish in Double Decker Red
1x white nail polish pen/paint - I used my rio nail pen
1x top coat
1x base coat

Step 1:

Apply base coat and allow to dry, then apply your red polish all over the nail and apply as many coats as you feel it needs. Allow this to dry before moving on to the detailing.

Step 2:

OK, now your nails are dry it's time to start adding some of the white detail. If it helps, you can mentally divide your nails into thirds. For the first third, you need to add some dots at the top of the nail...

I alternated between double dots and single dots, purely because I thought it looked better, but you can play about with this and do larger or smaller dots and organise them differently if you like.

Step 3:

Now we're onto the second third of the nail and you'll need to make two 'x' shapes, leaving space in the middle where the four lines would usually join.

As with the first step, you can totally play about with this. You could make lots more smaller dots or you could have the lines joining if you so desired.

Step 4:

This is the last third of the nail, but it's also the most complicated (but only because more than one pattern goes in here). Firstly, you need to draw a straight line up that fills most of the third, then you will need to draw 'branches' coming off it. This is supposed to resemble a Christmas tree. Around both sides of the tree, dot on three dots, with two next to the tree and one in the middle of those two. Finally, draw two straight yet diagonal lines underneath the tree, and you're done!

Of course, you can play around with this part of the design too, however I do think the tree part is kind of crucial for capturing the idea of 'Christmas'. 

Step 5:

Allow the nails to fully dry. Your final step is to apply a top coat and you don't want to smear all of the white detail up your nail, so ensure that you leave the nails for a decent amount of time before applying a top coat. If you can do it an hour or so later, that would be ideal. Finally, apply one layer of your chosen top coat and leave to dry. Now you're all good to go with cute, Nordic, Christmassy nails! :)

Nordic style prints are really 'in' this Christmas (rumour has it that it's partly due to Forbrydelsen and Sarah Lund's jumpers in the show). In fact, most of my Christmas wrapping is themed like this too. 

What do you think? Please let me know if you try this out by either leaving me a comment below or tweeting me (links will be below)! :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Bunny Friends Nail Tutorial

Do you often see nail tutorials, or indeed just photos of nail designs, and think ''I could never do that''? If the answer is yes, then stay tuned because I have a super-cute, super-easy nail tutorial for you today...

You will need:

A grey polish (mine is a Nails Inc mini) and a white polish. These will become the background for your design, but will also be used in the actual design itself. Make sure that your grey isn't too light as you'll want there to be distinction between the two colours.

A base coat and a top coat. I chose the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri purely out of convenience. 

A glitter. I chose this (totally out-of-focus, apologies) Nails Inc polish that I got free in Glamour magazine, but you can pick up extremely similar dupes cheaply in Superdrug and Boots. This is to give some extra sparkle to the bare nails. 

Three toothpicks/cocktail sticks. You will need to use these for the finer details in the design. You could get away with only using two, and using both ends of one, but I prefer to use three.

A light to mid pink. This will be used as part of the design. You could also use this as the colour of the non-patterned nails if you fancied. I also used my Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener, although you could just use the white polish I mentioned above. 

Step 1:
File/shape your nails. I personally prefer a flat edge, but I know some people prefer a rounded edge. For what it's worth, flat edges probably look better with this design, but you can go with whatever...

Step 2:
Apply a base coat. I just used Rimmel's 60 Seconds clear polish, but you can choose whichever you like. 

Step 3: 
Apply your grey polish to every other finger nail, and apply your white to the remaining nails. Allow to dry for as long as you need. Depending on how strong you like the colour to be, you may need to apply more than one coat.

Step 4:
When your nails are dry, you need to make an arc on the end of your nail in whichever colour is not already on your nail. So, if your nail is painted grey, paint a white arc. If your nail is painted white, paint a grey arc. For my white arcs, I used the Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener as it was more precise. These arcs will be the face of the bunny.

Step 5:
Next, draw two lines straight up from the arc with a small gap between. Make sure the lines are the same colour as your arc, as while your bunnies could have differently coloured ears, it'll look neater if the colours are the same.

Step 6:
Take one of your cocktail sticks and dip it into the pink polish. Then, draw two thin lines in the middle of the ears, and one smallish pink dot near to the base of the nail. These will be the pinks of the ears and the nose.

Step 7:
Then, for white bunnies, take another cocktail stick and dip it into the grey polish. Dot on two little eyes and then draw two thin lines either side of the nose (for whiskers). For grey bunnies, repeat this but make sure you use the white polish instead. 

Step 8:
Now, you could put bunnies on all of your nails if you like, but I chose to apply gold glitter over all nails except the ring finger and thumb. If you choose the same, do this now and allow to dry.

Step 9:
Make sure you tidy up any messy edges (I prefer to use little cotton buds dipped in nail polish remover to do this) and then apply a top coat. I use Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri because it really does help to dry the nail quicker, or at least dry to the touch. Allow all of your nails to dry, then you're all set!

Of course, you can mix up the colours of this as much as you like. I think this design would look really cute at Easter with nice pastels :)

Here's the finished product...

Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you've tried anything like this :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo
Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti
Instagram: iRachey