Hey ya'll! I'm back for my second Mani Monday contribution to Glitter and Gloss! Since this is February, the love month, I figured a Valentines themed design was appropriate. This is the final look:
The polishes I used for this design are OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (white), Zoya Sweet (light pink), Milani Fast Fuchsia (dark pink), a-England Camelot (black) and Excalibur (silver). The tools I needed to do this design are my dotting tools and a wedge shaped makeup sponge. I got my dotting tools at Amazon.com - these are the ones I use, it's a set of 5 double-ended ones. I've had them for a year and a half so far - they're still in great shape:
These are something like the makeup sponges I used:
2. I used My Boyfriend Scales Walls and Sweet to do a gradient on all nails except the accent nail. I learned how to do my gradients from The Nailasaurus. Click here for her tutorial: The Nailasaurus Gradient Tutorial. It's really the best way to get a smooth gradient in my opinion. She uses a slightly different sponge than I do. I had to do about 2 layers to get this gradient.
3. I used my dotting tools to put on the leopard spots, some of which are heart shaped. I used Fast Fuchsia for the spots on the main nails and Excalibur for the spots on the accent nail. These are very easy to do because it does not have to be perfect, in fact it's better if it isn't. For the hearts I used a larger dotting tool and used two dots side by side for the top part, then used a very small tool to draw lines down to the point and fill it in with polish. I should've gotten pics of these steps, so I hope what I explained makes sense! To use dotting tools - drip a few drops of polish on a sheet of paper and dip the tool into it. There is much more control this way than dipping straight into the bottle. Trust me - don't dip straight into the bottle!
4. I used a small dotting tool dipped into Camelot and outlined the spots and filled in the bare areas with small dots. You don't want to completely outline the spots, but make irregular C shapes around them. Then of course I did my clean up and put a top coat to smooth out the surface and seal it all in.
As you can see I didn't do any cleanup until the very last step. If it helps you though, you could certainly clean up after each step. Also, if you don't like the hearts, just leave them out and make regular spots! I used these specific colors, and the hearts, to go with the Valentines theme, but the color possibilities are endless here. You could also leave out the gradients on all the nails like I did for the accent nail. Here are some examples of leopard mani's I've done in the past. Definitely get better over time:
You can find Tiffany here: BLOG * INSTAGRAM
These are awesome, Tiffany!! Now it's YOUR turn to link up!! I can't wait to what you guys are rocking, and I'll pin my favorites! xo, Heather
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