Easter Manicure

So, I totally wasn't going to an Easter themed manicure, but I got bored tonight and actually felt like trying for once haha. Husband told me to do an Easter egg mani but, I felt like everyone else was doing that so I tried something new!

My Easter themed manicure!

More pictures and tutorial after the jump... or bunny hop ;]

Now, if you're going to try this I warn you: it's crazy messy! I think the outcome was worth it though, nothing a q-tip and a brush can't fix. It's kind of the same idea as a gradient manicure with a sponge... I couldn't find my sponge (WHICH I JUST USED! Ugh.) So I opted for this. I've seen it done with acrylic paint, so I tried it with polish. You were warned ;]

Ingredients:

- fan nail art brush
- newspaper (or any paper)
- 2+ polishes
- q-tip and/or brush for clean up
- polish remover, acetone is my choice


Directions:

1) You're going to need a fan shaped brush like this. I bought my nail art brushes on eBay for like $2.50 with shipping, here. I chose the white one because it was a little more stiff than the yellow colored bristles.It probably doesn't matter though lol.

2) Choose your polish colors. I think this would be okay with 2 colors, but I opted for 3 because I'm awesome... but not awesome enough for more lol. I used Zoya Shelby, Sinful Colors Be Happy and China Glaze Lemon Fizz.

3) Get a good amount of polish on your brush and  then draw lines across the paper. You want them close together but not TOO close or TOO far apart. You want to be able to get all the colors on the brush but if they're too far apart you won't get all the colors on your nail. My picture is a little too far apart, but that is because I had been dragging over it 10+ times lol, go for something closer than that!

4) Drag the brush through the polish. I recommend then flipping it over and dragging it through again.

Your brush should look like above once you drag it through the polish, hopefully yours isn't as big of a color in the middle though lol. Myyyyyyy badddddd. If so, it'll still be okay. Or, you can clean it off and start again.

5) Run the brush across your nail. (after you've applied and dried your base coat obviously haha) You might have to do it a few times for opaqueness. I had to do it 3 times but it blended better with more I applied. I warned you it was messy!! hahaha

6) Clean up! I used the q-tip to clean up most of the polish on my skin and then went in with the brush to clean up closer to the nail.

7) Apply your top coat! It really blends it together and gets rid of any crazy obvious brush strokes. I added Essie Pure Pearlfection after my top coat to give it some sparkle!

TAHHH DAHHH!! The final result:

Pretty cool looking, I think! I'm shocked at how well I did actually. I usually give up pretty fast with nail art because my patience is pretty low haha. Ew, forgive my dry fingers please! Acetone and crazy weather changes are not nice to them :[ I think the result is pretty similar to the sponging technique.

What do you think? Worth a shot? Or too messy for you? I kinda want to try it with different colors.. hmm maybe neons! Hope ya'll have a good Easter Sunday, Zombie Jesus Day or just Sunday in general if you don't celebrate! :]

Until next time,
Lacey