piCture pOlish Blogfest 2013

Welcome to piCture pOlish Blogfest 2013!
Each year piCture pOlish select some lucky bloggers to blog about their products. Everyone posts on the same day, at the same time.
This year I was lucky enough to be selected for Blogfest and the theme was nail art.
Uh oh. Nail art. Hrmm.. My version of nail art is to do some nail stamping. I knew I’d have to put my thinking cap on for this one.
Luckily there are some nail art ideas out there for us not-so-talented nail artists. I’ve put together a tutorial on some simple nail art that anyone can do – a “Nail Art for Dummies”, if you will.

Away we go!
First, select the piCture pOlish shades that you plan to use:

Lucky me was given Antique, Mardi Gras and Atomic.

There’s a little bit of prep work involved so make sure you do these few steps the night before you plan to do your mani.
Grab a sheet of household baking paper and paint a few coats of polish onto it. Allow it to dry overnight.

I wasn’t sure how much I was going to end up using so I painted quite large strips. You don’t have to wait too long in between coats for the polish to dry, just make sure you wait at least six or so hours after the final coat.

Carefully use tweezers to peel off your polish strips.


Grab a craft punch from somewhere like Lincraft or Spotlight. They are pretty inexpensive (mine was $7). Use it to punch the shape out of the polish.

Be careful as the polish can get quite brittle! You may need to lightly pull the polish away from the punch.
You can also use scissors to cut out thin strips or pinking shears to cut zig zagged strips.

You’ll end up with a lot of pretty shapes and, in my case, some sparkly strips.


Now we’re ready to paint the nails!

I used Atomic as my base colour with an accent nail of Antique. Atomic is such a pretty but subtle colour.
Antique is almost a one coater but I did two coats to be on the safe side. Atomic seemed quite sheer at first but it built up nicely with three coats.

Grab your third polish. In my case, it’s Mardi Gras, a multi coloured glitter topper.

I chose to go simple with this one. I simply painted two coats of Mardi Gras over Antique. It’s a subtle but glamorous look!

Use either a toothpick, a metal manicure tool or a dotting tool to pick up one of your shapes.

Dip whatever tool you’re using into a slow-drying top coat first so you can stick it to the nail properly.

Carefully lay it on the nail in the position you want.

Try not to move it around too much because you may smudge the base colour!
You can use cuticle nippers to cut off any overhanging bits.
I then did the same with the polish strips to form a diagonal line pattern.

Add a coat of top coat and you will end up with this:

There you have it, a pretty yet simple to do nail art manicure.

Now sit back, relax, and throw your arms out in glee!


Em