Summer Nail Challenge - Day 12

Today is Day 12 of Makeup Savvy's Nail Challenge and todays theme is striped nails, if you don't know what I am talking about then you can see more info on, or if you want to get involved yourself you can find all the information HERE.  I also did the challenge on day 6, 7, 10 and 11 so if you want to see my glitter nail post then you can HERE, if you want to see my neon nails you can HERE, if you want to see my gradient nails you can HERE and if you want to see my metallic nails you can HERE.

Okay so today's theme is stripes and I know what you are thinking when you look at the picture, I know I have used dots but I have made the pattern of stripes.  I am not good at creating the conventional stripe pattern on my nails because my hand is not the steadiest and one of the important things about the stripe is that it is relatively straight, and does not end up being a shaky mess on my nail, which mine mostly is.  So to avoid this problem, and to help any of you that are not the best at doing stripy nails, I have created this look which I hope you like, and now I will explain how I did it.



For the base coat of my nails I used this gorgeous colour by MUA called "U R FAB" which is from their love hearts collection.  I love this product for so many reasons and I have actually done a separate review HERE so if you want to find out more about this product, pricing, where to buy etc then you can but in short: the colour is so unique, the application is amazing, the opacity is great 2 coats is plenty to create an opaque nail and the drying speed is amazing.  I am a massive fan of MUA anyway as they are so affordable and when I got this I was bracing myself to not be impressed with the polish because it was so reasonable, but I have to admit if I had paid more money for this product I would not have been disappointed, so if you are near a Superdrug any time soon check out the MUA stand.



After the base coat had dried I used a white polish to create the dotted effect on my nails, the white I used was from a Primark set from a while ago but any white polish will give the same effect.  A lot of you may think that this design can only be achieved if you have a nail dotter or another nail tool, which is not the case at all.  I simply used a bobby pin, or a hair grip which ever one you call it, which if it has the tiny little grippy bobble on the end of the grip will do this effect, you can pick these up so cheaply from most stores so it is a cheap but very effective alternative to a nail dotter or nail tool.  Just dip this bobby pin into the nail varnish and then create the design on the product. Simple.  Obviously the more product on the end of the grip means the larger the dot, so you might want to vary this depending on which nail you are doing.  



I then created 2 lines of these dots down the central third of my nail as the first part of my striped nail design.  You could just leave the design here as I think it is a simple yet very effective design, and this was my original idea, but I decided to go one step further and add some more dots to create a more patterned nail.  You can also vary the colours and designs of these dots to create millions of designs, and when you have mastered the design believe me it is so simple, yet people will always question how you have done this design.

Next I chose to use this gold colour by Nails Inc called Lanesborough Place which is a colour that I also used in my metallic nails design from yesterdays challenge.  This is a gorgeous colour and also quite subtle on this design, that adds a little bit of colour but this is not too bright or overwhelming for the nail design.  I then added 3 stripes of dots on both sides of the white dots and one in the central part of my nail.  I think that this just made the nail slightly more busy and filled up than with just the white stripes, but you could have used more than just 2 colours for this design which might have made the striped design more obvious but I think that this is quite a subtle design.

So there you go, my not so traditional striped nail design, but I think that it is a bit more unusual than the normal striped design and definitely something to try out if you are not so steady handed or do not have time to spend hours doing extremely precise nail art.

If you have entered todays challenge feel free to leave a link to your blog in the comments section below, or feel free to email or tweet your photos to me, all information on how to contact me can be found on the right side of my blog.  If you haven't entered today feel free to head on over to Makeup Savvy's page to see tomorrows category HERE and see if you are up for the challenge on Day 13.