The first

My latest obsession is nail art (this excludes the ongoing obsession with clothes, shoes and beauty). So I thought it fit for my first post to be a nail art tutorial. The thing with nail art, is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's best to have a friend near to help, in my case my cousin. Its hard enough trying to paint with my left hand, never mind making designs!

We decided on a sailor look, and found this picture on FASHIONFREAX.

 The Inspiration

In my tutorial I will show step by step how to do this design, as well as all the tools you need. All my tools and polishes are affordable, mostly Essence :)

First of all this is what you will need: 

A base coat, I use Bourjois So Perfect

You will also need a white, blue and red polish.

I also have a white tip painter by Essence which I used for the anchor

I have a dotting tool as well as a nail art brush, both by Essence

And a top coat to finish off your look

Step 1: Apply the base coat to all your nails. This is a very important step, especially when using high pigment colours. If you do not use a base coat your nails will stain. A base coat also prolongs the life of your mani as your polish sticks better to it than to your natural nail. I do not have a picture of the base coat, as it is pretty straight forward :P

Step 2: Choose which nail you would like to be blue with the anchor. I personally prefer my ring finger or middle finger. Paint all your nails white, except the "chosen one", paint that nail blue. You may need 2 coats, depending on your polish.After every nail that you paint, use a toothpick or even a dotting tool and run it around the edges of your nails where the nail and finger meet, this prevents your polish peeling when you clean up the edges. 

I should add that I am a very messy painter, so half my finger ends up with polish. Instead of cleaning it with remover, I run my fingers under hot water once my nails are completely dry, and the polish peels off my fingers very easily. 

Your nails should now look like this:

Step 3: The next step is to make the red stripes on your white nails. You can use tape for this by putting strips of tape over the white and the painting red over. You then peel off the tape and you will have your stripes. If you use this method, ensure your nails are completely dry before applying the tape.

I did it free hand with the brush by Essence and the red polish, also by Essence. This brush came in a pouch with 3 sponges, which I use for an ombre sponging look, I will do a tutorial for this in days to come. This kit is very cheap, and works really well, I bought mine from Dischem. Your can decide how thick you want your red stripes to be, as well as how far apart you want them. Because the brush is quite long, I placed it on  my nail, to make a straight line across, and filled in the edges after. 

It is important to clean your brush with nail polish remover after making all your stripes.

Step 4: Now, for the anchor. I used the dotting tool, and the white tip painter, again, both by Essence. To start make a dot in the center of your nail, about 3 mm from your cuticle, this is for the head of the anchor. I used the dotting tool dipped in white polish for this. I had to dot a few times to get the size I wanted, I even increased the size again after the rest of the anchor was done. Then draw a line straight down toward the tip of your nail with the tip painter. Stop about 3 mm from the edge of your nail. Then draw an arch across your nail, perpendicular to the long line you did before. Draw triangles on the ends of the arch. You then need to make a hole with blue in the center of the dot at the head of the anchor. I pressed the dotting tool into it, and it made a hole without me having to put blue polish on. If this doesn't work for you, clean the white off your dotting tool, then dip it in your blue polish and dot on top of the white dot. 

And VOILA!

It doesn't look as perfect as the inspiration, but pretty good for my first try. I just realised now that I did not put the line that cuts across the long line, sigh. So don't make my mistake, and make a short line about half way between the dot and the arch. 

Thanks for reading!

If there are any inspirations that you like and don't know how to do, I would love to give it a try, so leave a comment or send me an email and I will try my best to help.