Fabulous Tip of the Day: Easy Tie-Dyed Nail Art

Today's Fab Tip:

I've mentioned before that I kinda suck at nail art, so I'm always happy to find an easy hack for a lazy girl like me to have adorable nails.

"Swirl pastels for a tie-dyed look."
-- Taken from Glamour magazine, May 2015, page 110.

Seriously, it's that simple. Take two pastel nail polishes and swirl them together on your nails to make it look tie-dyed and artsy. Plus it's a way to use two fun colors at once when you can't decide. ;-) Just dip a q-tip in nail polish remover and clean up around your nail bed if you accidentally color outside the lines. Personally, I'd love to pair a mint and pale petal pink together for this kind of look. If you want to get a little more complex, add in a third polish.

What colors are you going to use together for tie-dyed nails? Let me know in the comments, or tweet me a picture of your mani @ak_gossipghoul. 

XOXO
Gossip Ghoul.

Fabulous Tip of the Day: Nude Mani Hack

Today's Fab Tip:

A nude manicure is an instant way to polish your look and make it sophisticated and modern. It's also great for balance: if your outfit is mainly bold colors and prints, your nails (as an accessory) stay neutral to keep from being over the top. This particular tip,  from New York Fashion Week Spring 2015, is a new take on the nude mani.

"Use ridge filler as polish. As seen at Alexander Wang[,] Essie celeb manicurist Michelle Saunders layered a coat of ridge filler over neutral polish. It acts like an Instagram filter, adding extra brightness to your mani."
-- Taken from People Style Watch March 2015, p. 150.

Additionally, using the ridge filler over your polish means you can skip top coat, which means your mani is done faster, so this works well for a last minute touching up your nails thing in the morning before work.

Stay fabulous, readers.

XOXO
Gossip Ghoul

Deformed Squiggles: My Early Attempts At Nail Art

Only a fraction of my nail polish collection, of course.

I have to admit that I love nail art, and I really admire the people who do such fantastic designs, like at The Daily Nail Blog. The problem with nail art, however, is that if you suck at art in general -- in other words, are unable to draw a circle without it being misshapen or even a straight line -- then you most likely suck at nail art. And by you, I mean me.

OK, so I don't suck at all nail art. I can do well with very simplistic designs. Sally Hansen's nail art pens and fine-tipped Sharpies make things easier, like polka dots or a deformed squiggle. Not to brag or anything, but I'm super skilled at deformed squiggles that are so terrible that they don't look remotely like alike on any of my nails.

Picture from The Daily Nail Blog

Now, I definitely don't want to sound like a hipster, but I was doing nail art before it was big. My first masterpiece was for the opening of Spider-man 3. On my left hand, I did stripes of alternating cherry red and midnight blue Wet N Wild polish because, you know, red and blue are Spider-man's colors. Duh. Then on my right hand I alternated dark purples because, being an optimistic idiot, I actually thought Venom was going to be an important part of the film. Silly me. Years later I did a similar concept for the opening day of The Amazing Spider-man. I got the minis set from OPI's tie-in collection for the movie and alternated the nails of my left hand in Into The Night (a gorgeous deep blue) and Your Web Or Mine (a pinky red) and my right hand with the silvery-greens of Just Spotted The Lizard and Number One Nemesis, although these were solid nails, not stripes. However, I didn't have my Spider-man hair ribbons to wear to the premier, so I wasn't quite as geekily awesome that time.

My best nail art ever was for the premier of the Watchmen movie. I actually had to go to four different stores to find yellow nail polish, and eventually I got a tiny bottle from Claires. I recreated the book cover on each of my nails (minus the title and text). I did three coats of yellow (since it was such a thin color) and then a swipe of black from Hot Topic down the middle, trying to make it as oval as possible. Next I put a slash of blood-red diagonally through the black to be the splatter of blood across the smiley face eye, and finally I sealed it all with a top coat. Very simplistic, but fantastic. I keep thinking I should recreate it sometime.

The following summer, I attempted to make Rorschach ink blots on my nails when the director's cut of Watchmen was released on DVD, but that attempt at nail art was a fail. Symmetrical, abstract blobs of black are a lot harder to pain than they sound. For the record, the Batman symbol is also very difficult to paint. Kudos to anyone who can accomplish that.

Picture from The Daily Nail Blog

Not all nail art has to be nerdy, of course. That's just the direction I happen to lean in. Sometimes nail art can be as easy as using a crackle or shatter, magnetic, or texture polish. And for the lazy girls like me, there's always nail wraps, those stickers or strips of nail polish, many with fabulous designs. For those, it doesn't matter if you suck at art; you can still have fantastic nails no matter where your talents lie.

Btw, if anyone can pull of Rorschach nails, tweet me the pictures (@ak_gossipghoul) so that I can glower at them in envy and awe.

XOXO
Gossip Ghoul.