Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Today's post is just a quickie to discuss what I believe to be essential tools for creating nail art...
Striping Brush - This is essential for creating straight, neat lines. This brush would come in handy in gingham designs or any other design featuring lines.
Dotting Tools - These are particularly handy for creating flowers or for any design involving dots. These are super cheap on Amazon and you can buy them in packs of varying sizes.
Normal, Small Brush - This is essential if you are wanting to create shapes, fill in parts of the nail in one block colour or just use a thinner, smaller brush than the one that comes with a polish. This is especially handy if you are using acrylic paints to create your nail art.
Can you think of any other essential nail art tools? Let us all know in the comments if you can!
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! This Very Berry nail tutorial is the next step up from my last tutorial (Vintage and Floral) and builds on the skills you've started to pick up. This is quite rare for me, but this design is actually on my nails as I write this post and was created late last night as I sat in bed and decided I didn't like the polish I had on.
My Very Berry nail tutorial is PERFECT for autumn/winter and I've even added a bit of glitter for when Christmas rolls around and we're all breaking out the reds and greens with no idea what to do with them. This design could very easily be adapted to create a holly bush look too.
To create my Very Berry nails, here's what you need to do:
1. Get hold of a base coat, a patent/plain white (although if you're doing these at Christmas, a shimmery white would be totally appropriate!), a selection of red/plum/deep pink shades, a dark or khaki green and a top coat. If you're wanting to add glitter, get yourself a red glitter polish for ease or be brave and work with loose glitter - the choice is yours :-) You will also need a toothpick/cocktail stick or, preferably, a dotting tool.
2. Apply your base coat and leave to dry.
3. Apply a coat of white to each nail and let it dry a little. Continue applying coats until the colour is opaque enough for you then leave the nails to dry a little more.
4. Choose one of your reddish colours and add three to four dots on each nail, spaced well apart and these make up the basis of each berry. Clean your tool.
5. Take your next reddish colour and add dots next to and/or slightly on top of the existing dots. Clean your tool.
6. Repeat this with each reddish colour in your selection until you have circular shapes like mine. Clean your tool.
7. If you are using loose glitter, this is where you should allow your nails to dry completely then add the glitter. If you are using a glitter polish, treat it like a normal polish and follow the instructions in point 6.
7. Now take your green colour and add leaves to the berries. Allow the nails to dry a little.
8. Finally, apply your top coat and allow your nails to fully dry.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! A few weeks ago I was rooting round Boots and came away with a stash of new polishes to try out. I picked out two particularly fabulous colours that I paired together for today's design and I absolutely love them...
I love the combination of this deep, mustard yellow and muted navy blue and I think it creates quite a vintage effect. The best thing about this design is that it's perfect for nail art newcomers as I did all of this only using the brushes that came in the polishes.
To create this exact design, here's what you need to do:
1. Get hold of a base coat, Maybelline's 'Electric Yellow', Mavala's 'Trinidad', Barry M's 'Matte White' and a top coat.
2. Apply your base coat to every nail and leave to dry.
3. Apply Electric Yellow to every other nail and leave to dry. Apply further coats until you feel the colour is opaque enough.
4. Apply Trinidad to the remaining nails and leave to dry. Again, apply further coats until you feel the colour is opaque enough.
5. Take your Matte White and get rid of excess from the brush. Dab the polish on to create the petals of flowers. You can create as many flowers as you like.
6. On the yellow nails, take Trinidad and dot it in the middle of your flowers. On the blue nails, do the same with Electric Yellow.
7. Leave the colours to dry a little then apply your top coat and leave to fully dry.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Any friend of mine is more than likely to know that I absolutely adore the musician Josh Groban. I created these nails earlier in the year and have been wanting to blog about them for so long but never found the time on my old blog, so now I've landed here I'm finally releasing my inner joy at these nails...
I tweeted about these the night I created them and I was absolutely thrilled about this... (I was so excited I even went to my Grandma's house the next morning and went through the lengthy process of explaining Twitter to her just so a fellow Grobie could get excited with me.)
I love nail art and I love Josh Groban... and I love that a little hobby got me noticed by my absolute favourite musician whose music has genuinely helped me through hideous, hideous things in the past two years.
Any Grobies in the West Yorkshire area of the UK in desperate need of a manicure, I'll be more than happy to sort that out for you ;)
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Pushing Daisies is possibly my all-time favourite TV show and I'm still heartbroken that it was cancelled, but that definitely doesn't stop me loving the storylines and lusting after pie-making, dead-waking Ned. These nails were Pie Hole inspired and I hope any of you Daisy Pushers like them... :-)
In the top photo, we have a coffee mug on a serviette/napkin, a pie, live and dead strawberries on a wooden block and a knife and fork on a serviette/napkin. In the bottom photo, we have live and dead strawberries again, another pie, flour and pastry on a marble surface and one last pie. They may not be the best but I was proud of them and I think they represent The Pie Hole as an establishment quite well.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Today's post is a nail design that excited me greatly to create and walk around proudly showing off. I've seen stained glass inspired nails all over the place and I finally decided to create my own...
I love the vibrancy of these colours against the black, but these nails were a real labour of love and not advised for the nail art beginner of those with little time. I'm looking forward to adapting these for different occasions (Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's, Easter etc etc).
If you're wanting to create my vibrant stained glass nails, you will need the following basic colours:
- Patent/plain black
- Patent/plain minty teal
- Patent/plain coral
- Patent/plain yellow
- Patent/plain purple
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! I'm back today with another custom manicure. If you read Thursday's post, you'll know that I had two of my college friends over last week and I did both of their nails. Hop back a few posts if you want to see Sophie's Harry Potter and France themed manicure but hang around here if you're interested in Billie's cute, floral and brilliantly girly manicure...
After much deliberation Billie plumped for small flowers, big flowers and patchwork nails, which happen to be one of my all-time favourite discoveries. We went with a pink theme and used various shades as the bases with blue and yellow as the main flower colours. Billie is a girly girl but with an edge to me, so the inclusion of black in two of the designs helps to bring out that aspect of her personality.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! It's been a quiet few days here in Casa Lacquer but my obsession with photographing every nail design I create means that I have a great backlog of designs to share with you all. Today's is a design I distinctly remember earning me a lot of compliments from the girls on my uni course and one that can lend itself to almost every colour to match any mood...
Yep. Converse-esque nails. I love, love, love this nail design and think it's so versatile. The rocker could opt for vibrant reds and deep purples or blacks, the girly girl could opt for a baby pink or lilac and the adventurous ones among you could even try patterned bases to these sneaker themed nails (I've just given myself a fabulous idea there, haha).
If you're wanting to create sneaker nails, you will need the following basic colours:
- Any colour(s) you like for the base (i.e. for the actual shoe). I went for pastel colours here but you could choose absolutely anything and make it work for you.
- Patent/plain white (for the tip of the shoe and the laces)
- Patent/plain black (for the lace holes and the line across the lip of the shoe)
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! So, you know when you start to do your nails then by the time you finish you look down and think "I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with these nails"? I had that this weekend when I started off wanting white with vibrant-but-deep blue stripes. You can observe what happened for yourself...
I used glitter and also a matte topcoat to give this design a bit more 'jazz', but looking back now they'd look a lot better without the glitter. I like the pastels (obvious much given my last post haha!) and this is definitely one design that does benefit from a matte topcoat.
If you're wanting to create my animal-esque striped nails, you will need the following basic colours:
- Patent/plain white
- Selection of pastel colours - I used coral, lilac, bluey-mint, green and yellow
You will also need:
- A matte topcoat
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Today's post is a little different but I was browsing old photos taken on my phone at the weekend and came across a stash of my early nail designs back when I was experimenting with nail art and getting to grips with using my left hand to create something other than a mess...
One of the more frequent comments I receive both on the interwebs and in real life conversation is "I'd never be able to do nail art, it's too difficult" and I totally, totally get why so many of you think that. Back when I created these designs, I found them tough but now when I look back at the photos I'm cringing at so many things knowing how much better I am at it now.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there really is no reason to have nail envy when you look at nail art photos, all you need to do is invest in a couple of tools (striping brush, dotting tools and a tiny paintbrush) and take the time to practice when you can.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! French manicures are loved the world over and whenever I spot someone with a decent one it instantly makes me want one too. The only problem is... I get bored of it after a day and the effort I've put in gets erased when I change my nails a mere 24 hours later. How do you fix that? You 'edge' it up with some simple black stripes and a reliable ol' rhinestone...
You will need the following basic colours:
- Patent/plain white (a polish specifically designed for a Frenchie brush-wise is best as it's smaller and easier to use)
- Patent/plain black
- I also used a Sally Hansen shimmery pink topcoat over the white before I added the black and the rhinestone
You will also need the following accessory:
- Rhinestone (clear/silvery in colour)
I first created this around Christmas 2012 when I felt that my French manicure was a bit too formal and I love the fact that the general look is still obvious. This could be done with any colour stripe but generally speaking I'm not a fan of coloured rhinestones so I personally would recommend you stick with a clear or silvery one.
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! High fives all around for my terrible title-pun. As you may have been able to guess, today's nails are beach themed and combine one of my favourite nail shades - blue- and one of this year's biggest trends - ombre effect...
Given that this involves ombre and sponging and all of those things that even nail art enthusiasts shy away from, I'm not going to discuss what this involves but if anybody would like a proper tutorial leave me a comment below and your twitter or email so I can let you know when I post it :-)
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
Buenos días fellow lacquer lovers! Now I LOVE gingham-esque nails and I love, love, love this design on my toes, but after loving it so much on my toes and trying it out on my fingers I have firmly decided it is best left to the tootsies...
You will need the following basic colours:
- Patent/plain pastel/baby pink
- Gold
You might think this looks fab on the fingernails but it just didn't wow me on my own nails. Maybe gold over something like black would look better on me... who knows? I do love this on my toes though so it's definitely not a design to throw to the scrapheap. I think on someone else this would be a great design to pair with a similarly coloured pink dress and gold accessories for a party or formal event - one for you freshers to consider this September!
If you have any questions, you can leave me a comment below or tweet me @rachelizabethxo. I would LOVE to hear from you and find out your thoughts!
Happy painting!
Rachel xo
