Whimsical spring nails in the winter

I was inspired by the fact that it's January and it's 70 degrees outside! Normally at this time of year we would have had at least 3 good snow storms already. I live in a tiny town close to Yosemite, CA. and we have our share of bad weather, but it's a little alarming that we haven't had any this year yet. Maybe it's because it snowed in July of last year, or maybe this is Al Gore's wrath saying "I told you so" about global warming. Whatever it is, I'm not minding it.

     I thought that I would do a nail tutorial to celebrate 1.) me going back to work. and 2.)the delightfully warm weather we are having right now.  I started off by pushing back my cuticles, buffing my nails and putting on a coat of primer. I used the same Sally Hansen primer I used in my last tutorial. Once the primer dried I chose two pastel colors, a light minty color and a lavender color that I mixed myself.  I chose to go with alternating color choices and painted every other nail. 

     Next used a dotting tool (a toothpick) and I made 2-3 yellow dots on the fingers that had the minty color on them. These dots are going to be the stamens for the little flowers. My pinkie nail is real short so I decided to just do one flower instead. 

     Now it's time to pick your flower color. I went with pink for an extra spring-y vibe. I took a hot pink color I had and mixed it with white nail polish. I swirled the white in, but not all the way, giving it a marble effect. I did this so each flower would look a little different and a little more lifelike.  I used the dotting tool once again to make dots around the stamen to look like flower petals. I did about 5 dots for each flower ( I found that if I did more, it started to look like a blob.) . I also used my white nail polish and a small paint brush to make stripes on the lavender nails. I chose to do them vertically, but you can do them either way. I found that doing wider set lines looked better as well. I tried one nail with 7 stripes and it looked awful. I ended up having to start over on that nail. Also, my hands are not super steady and I found that if I set the brush down almost parallel to my nail, and set the brush on my nail and dragged back that I got a straighter more even line, as opposed to just using the tip of the brush. It made for more of a mess on my fingers, but it cleaned off just fine with remover. 

     As a finishing touch I took a dark green nail polish and my dotting tool (again, a toothpick) and made little leaves for each flower. Once I let things sit for a minute, I put on a topcoat. I like using the Sally Hansen insta-dry top coat, just because it drys in less then a minute. 

 and there you have it. My springy winter nails. I hope you give this a try and until next time, be safe and have fun! Oh and please subscribe!!!!