nails

MANI MONDAY

PHOTOS/POST/DESIGN: KRISTIN ESS for TBD

We’re mixing it up this 4th of July! Instead of the typical red, white + blue nail art wanted to do something a little more chic and wearable. Right now we’re pretty obsessed with white nails because they just look so clean and classic. The only thing that could make a white nail better would be adding a little GOLD! Today we’re doing our own take on the 4th of July mani to share with you gorgeous gals before the upcoming holiday. First let’s talk about how to make a star…

Remember the tutorial on how to make a heart? This is similar. We’re using the mechanical pencil method from this tutorial because you can get finer lines when making a star than you can when using a toothpick or dotting tool. So first you want to make a little puddle (a drop really) of paint as seen above, then scoop a little polish up on the pencil.

Make a dot where you want your center to be then gently slide the pencil outward and lift as you go. Your line should look like this.

Dab the pencil in the gold polish again and repeat. Start in the center and drag out.

Again.

Again.

I suggest practicing on a piece of paper first to get your technique down. Okay, now the main event…

Paint all of your nails white. Here we used Alpine Snow from OPI.

Next, cut some thin tape strips out of washi tape! I love using washi tape because it’s not as sticky as regular tape. I’ve had great experiences with using it for nail art, especially for stripes.

Lay the tape strips across evenly. This may look a little confusing since I used gold tape and gold paint, but stay with me! Once you lay all of your washi tape strips down, paint over the whole nail using a good metallic gold polish. Here I used Cruisin from Obsessive Compulsive.

May I suggest you paint and peel one finger at a time. If you let the polish dry too much while the tape strips are on there, you’ll likely end up with a mess when you try to peel them off. You want to paint each finger and then peel immediately before moving to the next one.

Once you peel the tape strips off, your nails should look like this. I kept the 2 middle fingers blank for…

PAINTING STARS!

Hope everyone has a safe 4th! Don’t forget to tag us in an instagram photo @TheBeautyDept if you do this mani!

Also, how does everyone feel about this new layout? Do you prefer this way or the old way? We got a lot of emails asking us to do it this way (instructions below each photo) so we thought we’d give it a shot. Let us know in the comments below!

Shorts are from HERE