I thought drawing feathers on nails would be hard, but it’s actually quite easy. You’re simply drawing a stem with short strokes pointing in the same direction. The strokes towards the tip of the feather is a bit longer than the strokes towards the base. Practice with pencil and paper first. =)
My nails were at their longest when I did this design. Crazy long for me. I could draw the full feathers on shorter nails, but the details won’t really show. So the “partial feathers” are for the short nails. There suppose to be the tips of feathers. From far away, the partial feathered design looks better. I still like the full feathers though.

Inspiration: I love feathers and it didn’t come to mind ’til a friend requested it. =) Hope this is what you meant when you said feathers…lol. People have different meanings for feathers/feathering when it comes to nail designs.

All pictures: click to enlarge

Products»
Essie in Au Natural
Striping paint in light blue, silver, white, and black

Hope you guys liked it! ^^

I love nautical stars. People get tattoos of it for the meaning of it, but I just simply like the design of it. Well, I guess, I look at it as a rocker thing. Either way…it’s a cool design for tattoos and your nails! Lol.

Besides flowers & feathering/lining/stroking, this design was the most requested at the last nail salon I worked at. I myself love this design. This one will probably be one of the harder designs of mine because you have to be able to draw a little. Other designs of mine are real easy because you’re just layering strokes on and adding dots.
So for this, you just need striping paint. Make sure the paint/polish in the bottle is the right consistency. The polish should be thin, not runny…pretty much how it is when you first purchase it. My bottle was on the thicker side, but I didn’t have any polish thinner to thin it out. I fixed that problem though. You can get polish thinner at beauty supply stores, probably Sally’s.

So here are the steps of drawing a nautical star. If you can’t draw it on paper, then it will be hard for you to draw it on a nail. Lol. Practice drawing this on paper first.

This drawing is pretty self-explanatory.
Polish two coats of your choice of polish, wait to dry a few minutes, then draw.
I did this design a lot with the colors I chose: purple polish with a white/silver star. I did it a few times with a chalky pink polish (Essie Figi) with a black star. Sometimes I would go over the drawing part only with glitter.

Since my polish was thick, I colored in the “negative space” with a color that wouldn’t be so noticeable. This makes it look cleaner and sharper. I used black because in natural light, you can’t see it. If you have striping paint that matches your nail color, use that.

Two stars are never going to be exact since you’re hand drawing this. I only rock one star when doing this on myself. =/ Can’t draw this one on the other like I can with my other designs.

I loved putting this star on the index fingers or thumbs. This is my friend, Ashley that came to me all the time for my designs. ^^ Miss ya, girl. Opera singer that moved to NYC. CRAZY voice! Younger than me too.

Anyways…hope you guys like it!

This has got to be my most favorite and EASIEST look I’ve done. I wore a purple version of this look on Monday [refer back to "FirstDay" post]. Seriously, I love love LOVE this look. From far away it looks like a bad paint job, but when you look closely, it’s beauty. It’s like a painting on a canvas. ^-^ So here’s a tutorial on Abstract Nails.
Inspiration: paintings I’ve seen before. Reminder of that inspiration: a skirt I got from Urban Outfitters. I love this skirt. I don’t have a picture of it right now, but it’s one of those ones you sit high on your waist. The skirt is made by Kimchi Blue, one of my favorite brands sold at UO.

One coat base coat. Two thin coats of color.

Add a stroke of two or three different colors randomly. Express yourself. It’s art!
Lol. Or just copy what I did here. =P

I layered a few shimmery polishes. [I always put shimmer/glitter on my designs]
Now, choose a color that’s matte and totally opposite in shade than your base. Here I chose a bright pinkish, red for my base. So for this step, I chose a matte navy blue so it really stands out. If your base color is really dark, almost black, then I would use a matte & opaque color for this step…like white or pastels.
When you pull your brush out of your bottle, make sure you wiped off pretty much all the polish off. Then paint your nails with dry strokes. You want those “stroke” lines to show. Then you can go back and grab more polish to add a few wet strokes.

Finish with topcoat. ^-^

Products»
Essie Wife Goes On
Orly Lola
OPI Banana Bandanna
China Glaze Beauty & the Beach
Sally Hansen Salon Shooting Star
Essie Midnight Cami

Enjoy!

I don’t particularly like this flower plant, but it’s great for nails! And why is it a holiday flower? I don’t know. I didn’t make the design completely red, cause that would be boring. So here’s my version.
Inspiration: Poinsettias

One coat base coat. Two coats silver. One thin coat of gold on the ends [halfway up].

With a magenta striping paint, draw petals and fill in on the corner of your nails.

With a red striping paint, draw bigger petals.

Fill the petals in, but don’t cover the magenta petals you made earlier. You don’t have to be perfect when filling it in.

With a teal striping paint, draw a few strokes for leaves.

With a green, draw a few more overlapping strokes for leaves.

With a black striping paint, thinly outline the flower.

Add green dots in the corner for the flower.

Add yellow dots over the green and glitter the tips of the flower to jazz it up.

Follow up with a top coat.

Products»
Sally Hansen Pro Shooting Star
Sally Hansen Pro Giltz Pleasure
Rimmel London 60 Seconds Camouflage
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rocking Pink
Striping paints: Magenta/pink, Reddish Pink, Teal, Green, Black

Hope you like it!

I have a dark version of this look on right now. I’ll put it up later.
^_^

This look doesn’t have to be for the holidays. If you switch colors up, it could a cute everyday design. This is real easy too.
Inspiration: candy canes. Yummy. I should have done the red ones with the yellow and green in it. Those are my favorite. I think it’s like a tropical fruit flavor? I want one.
The pictures are a little blurry, sorry. :]

One coat base coat. Two coats color.

On a diagonal, paint on a sheer pink.

Overlapping the pink halfway, polish on a sheer blue.

Totally optional, but it’s the holidays. Vertically, glitter on half the nail.

With silver striping paint, outline the blue polish. So here, I have four lines of silver.

On every other silver line, I went over it with a white, and added a small line by my cuticles.

Here, I just added a deeper blue next to the silver lines to give more depth. Finish off with a top of coat.

Products»
Rimmel London 60 Seconds in Broadway Burgundy
Revlon Posh Pink
China Glaze Beauty & the Beach
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink
Striping paint: silver, white, shimmery navy blue

Hope you like it! Try with with other colors.

I’ll have some non-holiday looks just for the heck of it & for those of you who think these are chessy. Lol. I’ll show you ones that were really popular with me, the ones my clients asked for a lot.
^-^