Bailey Anne Bravely

Closeups: lobster boat, islands, lighthouse. CLICK TO VIEW LARGER. Voila! I was on vacation last week on an island in Maine, and painted my nails schmancy on a rainy day, inspired by spectacular past island sunsets. Sorry for the dim lighting on the full set; I did closeups of a few so you can get the idea. I'm holding up my hands against a foggy day saying, "Here, these are the sunsets I am waiting for, but all I see is rain." As in my previous post, the fine detail is regular acrylic paint and a tiny paintbrush. What I did: 1. Paint entire nail orange. 2. Paint hot magenta on the top and bottom so it looks like an Easter egg. 3. Paint lighter pink splashes across the top for clouds. 4. Paint the bottom half with shiny pale blue, but make it so the brush is partially dry so it doesn't cover all the pink and orange so that you get some color reflecting in the ocean. 5. Paint the silhouettes with acrylic and a tiny brush and LOTS OF PATIENCE. All the skies...

This is from a while ago now... and yes, these are my real nails. My parents think I'm an alien because neither of them have excessively curved narrow fingernails like this. How to get this effect: the red and blue is regular nail polish, painted alternating fingers. The white is regular acrylic paint that you would use to paint a picture. I paired the white acrylic with a teeny-tiny paintbrush to get the fine lines, and then painted over the whole thing with clear nail polish to make it shiny and protect the acrylic from washing off. Warning: make sure the acrylic is ENTIRELY dry before covering with clear. The clear nail polish really likes to smudge the acrylic. The trick, as with most things, is patience. Just go really slow when drawing the lines so you have time to think about what direction it's going, especially when using your non-dominant hand. It can help to sketch your design on paper first to have something to reference when you paint. This was really...