Quilted nails!

So, I haven't posted for a while due to some pretty severe health stuff which I won't go into, but I'm going to try harder!

 

So, quick tutorial today on these gorgeous quilted nails.

 

I've been leaaning lately towards softer looking manicures, cuz I've been sick, the weather's been awful (windy as anything, cold, few thunderstorms) and I've been wanting soft looking nails that wouldn't look out of place poking out of an oversized sweater, or wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate. You know the look I mean. These don't exactly fit that bill, but they're soft, relatively easy, and cute. Plus, they've been popping up all over my Pinterest feed, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The ones I've seen that I loved the most are all soft, pastels (cream is lovely, pale pink, purple), I went with a blue from Sinful Colors, called Cinderella. It's quite a thin polish, I did 4 coats to build it up to opaque, but it's a beautiful, soft blue with a subtle pinky gold shimmer. Lovely.

 

I swear, there IS a shimmer. This was taken outside, you can almost see it, hiding behind the refelctions on the bottle. ;P

Now, there's a couple of different ways of achieving this effect. The first is to lay down your colour, let it dry completely, then apply striping tape in a criss cross pattern across the whole nail. Paint over this, then remove the tape. The second way (the one I went with) is to dent the polish. I waited until the polish was touch dry, but still dentable, and pressed into it gently with a business card until I had the pattern I wanted. The tape method is probably less dangerous in terms of bumping the wrong bit of nail, however the few times I've used the stuff, it didn't stick properly and was kind of more frustration than it was worth.

 

But thats just me.

 

Now, you'll get thicker lines with tape, but you can have deeper grooves (if you choose to) with the card method. It's totally personal preference.

 

Once I'd quilted the all my nails, I put a piece of large glitter where each groove met another. This is optional, but it gives you that studded look to your quilting. Very cool, in my opinion. You could also use rhinestones, but I'm running out of my smaller ones, so I just used glitter. I have some tiny heart ones which would be cute... Maybe next time. ;) You could also use microbeads, which are like little teeeeeeeeny tiny balls. But I don't have any. If I did, that's the route I'd have taken.

 

 

 

Anyway, apply your studs (should you choose), whack some top coat on over the top (don't worry. It won't smooth out your grooves. That was my main concern, but it's all good) and you're done!

Food for thought: You could get a few different styles with this technique: try black with gold studs for a more edgy look (a matte top coat would be really cool with that), outrageously bright fluros (I'm not a fan of bright yellow with my skin tone, but the quilting would be really unexpected with that colour), or even try this technique on a french tip.

Keeping it short.

My health hasn't been great lately, what with tonsillitis on and off for several months now, and it's really taking it's toll on my nails. They're brittle, dull and peeling at the tips, and while I've tried several different strengthening/anti-peeling treatments, nothing's really working. So yesterday, when my longest nail tore almost to the quick, I decided it'd be easier to just cut them all down and be done with it. It was pretty devastating for me, I love having long nails. 

 

So, as reconciliation, I decided to bling them up as much as possible! :D

 

I couldn't pick a colour, so I went with 3; a super shiny silver from BYS, a soft gold from L'Oréal, and a Models Inc black. I went with an extended french kind of look, painting roughly 2/3rds of each nail a different colour. I didnt worry about getting a nice curve to the line just yet, because I figured I can fix that up with a nail art brush later.

 

For a really stand out effect over the black polish, I used gold and silver leaf for the first time. I've had these little pots forever, but I was never quite sure how to use it. Do I pick it up with tweezers, or...? After some Googling, I found a technique I liked the look of, and set to work. You just need a fluffy makeup brush, and touch it lightly to the leaf. The brush will pick up a small amount (you don't wanna slap half the pot on at once, build it up), and dab it gently onto damp nails (not wet, you'll get dents in your polish and polish in your brush). It was really easy, and I love how it looks. The leaf sits really flat on the nail, I can hardly feel it. I've used a foil before, it was a plasticky laser etched one, and it was all spiky and impossible to glue down. A day after applying it I had fluff from my jumper all caught in my manicure, it was awful. The gold leaf is the complete opposite of that, it sits so smoothly.

 



Quick tip: Keep one brush for each colour unless you want them mixed on your nail

 



After fixing up the shape.

After I'd finished decorating the black nails with my leaf, I painted the rest  silver or gold at random, then stuck some super chunky rhinestones and some silver glitter over them (still sticking with the black, gold, and silver theme). For the finishing touch, I used a striping brush to round off the line at the bottom of my nails to give it a curve. Of course, a top coat to hold everything in place and make it extra glossy, and voila!

The end result is glittery, chunky, bedazzled and maybe just shiny enough to cheer me up about having short nails. ;)