Gone Wild - Animal Print Nail Art

Hello all,

Well, it seems it's only too easy to change my mind.  Having done a first last week, leaving a manicure matte, there is no stopping me now.  I have only gone and done it again!  After a comment on Twitter on my nails last week I was inspired to create my design this week and I am so so SO pleased with how they turned out.

These are my gone wild animal print nails.  Aren't they fun?  These took me quite a long time to do, but only because I wanted them to be just right so I took plenty of time.

From my thumb round to my little finger I have done, zebra, leopard, tiger, giraffe and cheetah prints.  I had the first four in mind all week long before doing these but had to think a bit more to come up with cheetah.  Want to know how I did these?  Well here goes.

Zebra - I started off with two coats of Snow White from Models Own.  After this had dried I used my Barry M nail art pen in black to freehand the stripes.  I bought the nail art pen especially for this as I was quite worried about this print and trying to do it with a striper or brush.  I can tell you now that I am most definitely not a fan of zebra print.  On my other hand I ended up removing it three times before it was only ok.  I do not think I will be doing this print again.  Well not freehand anyway!

Leopard - I have done this print before and it's super easy and fun.  You just splodge on a darker colour to your base and bracket the dots in black.  My base here is Barry M Matte Caramel, my dots are Barry M Matte Brown Mocha and I used Barry M Matte Espresso for the brackets.

Tiger - I didn't have a suitable orange for my tiger, so I mixed Barry M Bright Red and Barry M Yellow together to create the shade that I wanted.  I sponged this onto my nail so it covered all over.  I then sponged a little stripe of white in the centre of my nail thickening in out at the bottom so the white spread over the tip of my nail a little more.  I smoothed this out straight away with a normal top coat.  Once it had dried I used my Andrea Fulerton Striper (which comes with glitter on top, called Pattie) and started at the outside of my nail and flicked the lines inwards.  Again I have done this print before.

Giraffe - My Barry M Yellow was too bright to go with the rest of the tones with this manicure, so I wanted to dull it down a bit.  I started with a coat of Barry M Matte Caramel and once this was dry I painted a coat of Yellow over the top.  This worked as I had hoped and I think this gives a great giraffe colour.  I then used a dotting tool to create square-ish patches using Barry M Brown Mocha.

Cheetah - This was the most simple print which was just a coat of Barry M Caramel with small dots and curves in Barry M Espresso.

I topped it all off with a coat of Bourjois So Matte.  Now the eagled eyed amongst you might be wondering why I have taken a picture of my Cinderella hand... Well, there are two reasons.  I actually liked the zebra print on this hand better, but also I disappointedly smudged my tiger stripes on my other hand even though I thought they were dry.

I think this has got to be one of my favourite designs that I have done.  I hope you all like it and perhaps you might have a go at a wild manicure x