Flip Flop February Day 1: Gradient/skittle nails + Tutorial!

As always, remember to click the pictures for a larger view

Flip Flop February challenge.

So, first day of the challenge as you see is Gradient or Skittle nails. I was going to do a gradient, but then I changed my mind and came up with a cute Skittle mani, I added a little more to it than just painting each nail a different color though. And I've added a little tutorial for how I did it for those interested too, so it'll get a little pic heavy, so everything has been added after the jump, just click the link below. 

OH, and also, as a thing for the blog in the new year, I want to include more tutorials if I remember to do it as I do my nails. SO, I'll need to work on getting a good little method of doing them as I go. So let me know what you all thought of this format of the tutorial, or leave any feedback on how to improve it in the comments. 

Now for real, click the link below to see the Mani and how to do it :) 

cute half moon skittle owls. lookit how cute it is.

First things first. This is the look. Half moon skittle owls. I'm actually pretty excited about how this came out. So cute! Now, here's the list of products used:

•  Pinky finger is Sally Hansen Envy
• Ring finger is Sinful Colors Pull over
• Middle finger is wet n wild wild shine Sunny side up
• pointer finger is wet n wild wild shine Tickled Pink
• Thumb is La colors Bliss
• The details were done using an apple barrel acrylic paint set in primary colors.
• LA colors Rapid dry top coat
• Sally Hansen in invisible which is just a clear polish, any clear would work just as well.

And now that that's out of the way, lets get on with the rest of the post!

they look dirty but taking black polish off is such a pain.

Okay, so first we're going to start with fresh clean nails, but we should all know that right?

One coat of polish on each nail before clean up

Then we're going to add a then coat of each color we pick to our nails. I freehand my half moons but you can use guides or however you'd like to do it! Now as you can see, we need a little clean up on these.

after clean up

This is after a little clean up, and shaping the half moon up better with polish remover and a nail art brush. Now we can add a second coat!

these three nails actually needed a third coat, but the green and purple only had two coats, how many you use is up to you and the colors/polishes you pick to use.

This is after a second coat and more clean up. (A third coat on a few of the colors, so feel free to add another coat if you feel one or two colors need it) I like to clean up my nails inbetween coats because I feel it's easier to keep everything nice and clean that way, but you can wait til you have all you're coats of color on before you do clean up if you'd prefer.

Belly added. Our owls start to take shape now.

Let the polish dry and then add the owls belly. I chose to use acrylic paint for these details, but you could use a white polish as well if you'd like.

Our owl has eyes! Well.. almost.

I used the yellow polish from the ring fingers to make dots on all the other fingers for the owls eyes. On the ring fingers over the yellow, I used the orange polish for the eyes.

eyes are finished and our owl has a mouth!

Add black dots in the center of the eyes for pupils, and use and orange to make a little triangle for the beak/mouth. Again, for both of these, I chose to use acrylic paint, but feel free to use polish if you'd rather.

Final look. Our owl is complete.

Then, add any final details left, top coat and you're owl is done! I just little matching color dots on the belly, but you could mis-match the colors if you'd like, put green dots on the purple own, and orange on the green owl, etc. If you don't want to match them, that parts up to you! You could also probably make the 'ears' stand out more with some outlining if you'd like, but I chose to leave mine like this. Hope you all could follow along fairly easy! Also for this look I top coated with a regular top coat, well, just a clear polish, let it dry for about ten minutes, then used a fast dry top coat over that.

And a few more pictures of our finished owls!

Something else I'd like to remember to do more of in the next year, show off my right hand! Cause I almost always do both hands with my nail art. The right hand doesn't always look as good, but I do it still. It's also harder to get pictures of the right hand. But! Here are the owls on my right hand, the look decent enough minus were i bumped my pinky against a bottle of polish and now it looks like his eyes are melting off, haha.  But there you have it! Those are my Skittle nails for the first day of the challenge!