Nail art basics + tips and tricks

New to nail art? Yes...then you are in the right place

Nail polish in it's natural habitat...sort of :)

Photo by me

I definitely need 4 polishes, which are pretty much identical to eachother...

I've done a few posts about nail art, so I thought I'd cover the basics of it for anyone wanting to start doing nail art themselves.

The most important thing, when you're painting your nails is, that you have to use base and top coat to protect your nails and your nail art, There are so many good ones and you won't have to pay a lot for them, I really like the ones from Wild&Mild, I like their nail polishes in general, they dry fast and they have such a huge variety, it's amazing.

Once you've applied your base coat, you have to learn how to paint your nails so as little polish as possible would get outside the lines...and yes, that's easier said than done, but with time, you'll get there, trust me.

Some tips for painting your nails are to make sure there isn't too much polish on your brush, it's wiser to make two thin coats, than to make one thick one and then have polish allover the place. The 3 stroke method is quite common as well, in which case you make one straight line along the centre of your nail and then two curves that go along the sides of your nail. 

You can find plenty of videos on YouTube as well on how to paint your nails, if that's difficult for you, or just clean up the mess afterwards with a small brush and nail polish remover or just wait until the polish is complelty dry and just wash it off with water from whereever you got it on your skin.

Next up, nail art tools, finding nail art tools from shops can be quite difficult or they end up being rather expensive and at least for me I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it, if I wasn't even sure, if I'd like it or be any good at it.

You can make plenty of nail arts without using any tools or you can use things you have at home anyway. For example toothpicks, they make amazing dotting tools and once you have mastered making dots, you are invincible...or something like that.

You can make endless designs using dots: flowers, leopard print, hearts and other fun things. You can be as creative as you wish. I will make a separate blog posts on nail arts, which are very beginner friendly and require no huge skills or equipment.

I recommend practicing any design first on white paper, also put a drop of your nail polish on a piece of paper or cardboard or something like that, and then dip your tool inisde that drop of nailpolish instead of straight into the polish bottle, it'll make it a lot easier to control how much polish you're taking and your tools will stay cleaner.

Nail art brushes can be quite tricky to buy, you can get cheaper ones online or you can buy the smallest paint brush you can find and try how it works, when necessary you can also cut the brushes smaller, but be careful with that.

Any kind of freehand painting on your nails is of course a lot more difficult than doing dots or simple shapes, especially, when you have to do it with your non-dominat hand, but with a lot of practice you'll get there.

Another thing, I find important, is to invest in a good black polish and a good white polish, again I'd recommend the ones from Wild&Mild, but if you can't find those, then there are plenty of other ones. The reason I think that's important, is that you can mix them into other polishes, to create more different shades, without owning over 200 polishes, like I do. White polish is also a very good base colour for most nail arts, because all colours pop on it and it's just like a blank canvas.

You can also use acrylic paint on your nails for drawing, they're rater easy to use, especially if you have to actually paint something more complicated, it doesn't get as thick as many layers of polish would. However then you still have to use some sort of polish to paint your nails first a solid colour of your choice.

I think that'll be it for today, if I remember anything else important, then I'll make an additional post to this one, if you have any questions in particular, then  you can leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer, if I can.

Kaiela :)