Yin Yang Nail Art with Step-by-Step Tutorial!

Hello everyone,

Today I have tutorial for you. I'm going to show you some really simple "Yin-Yang" nails. These were inspired by the nails that Katy Perry had done for the September 2012 issue of US Elle magazine.

This was the image used on the cover - you can just about see the design on her nails!

Here are my own nails finished

Okay so onto the tutorial:

You will need:
- (Optional) base coat
- White nail polish (I used OPI Alpine Snow)
- Black nail polish (I used Jack Wills Black)
- Black and white nail art pens or some sort of dotting tool
- (Optional) top coat

STEP 1) Paint your base coat and ensure it's fully dry. Then you need to do 2-3 coats of your white nail polish. The reason I say do the white first is because it's much easier to do black on the white rather than trying to cover up black with white on top (if you get what I mean!).

STEP 2) This bit is quite fiddly, but just take your time and you should be fine. Make the line for the black half of the nail by doing a free-hand "wave". I used a striper brush to do this but if you're feeling brave you could just use the regular brush in your polish. Fill in from the line right to the edge of your nail so that one half of your nail is covered in black. Do as many coats as you need to for the white polish to become invisible underneath.

STEP 3) Use whatever you're using as your dotting tool to place a small white dot on the black side of your nail and a small black dot on the white side. Obviously make sure they're at opposite ends of the nail like my photo shows or it wouldn't be the correct pattern for yin yang!!

STEP 4) All done! If you are choosing to use a top coat on your nails, then do this now. Just make sure your nails are absolutely dry and "hover" the brush over the nail rather than dragging it to ensure your don't smudge your design.

Hope this helped some of you :)

Mini Bow Nail Art with Tutorial

Hi guys! I can't believe it's friday already - school half-term holiday has gone so incredibly fast, but it's really cool that the next time we break up, it will be for christmas! I'm so excited for it already haha. Anyway, time to get onto the post.

Today I'm going to give you a tutorial on how to do a cute little bow manicure yourself.
Please bear with me as this is my first attempt at doing a tutorial!

Here you can see the finished product:

Now onto the tutorial! I hope it all makes sense - like I say, bear with me. It's actually a really simple look to achieve.

See steps below that refer to each picture! Enlarge this if you need to.

You will need:
- 2 different coloured nail polishes (here I've used OPI's 'If You Moust You Moust' and Nicole By OPI's 'My Lifesaver'). You could do this with just the one colour but I personally think it looks prettier with two.
- Striper brush with black and white nail polishes / or white and black nail art pens.
- Dotting tool or a toothpick, hair grip etc
(- Base and top coats)

STEP 1) If you're using a base coat, apply it and make sure it's dry. Then move on to paint each nail with 2-3 coats of your chosen polish (obviously this depends on how sheer your polish is).

STEP 2) Once you've made sure the colour is dry, you're ready to start the first step of creating the bow. You need to use your striper brush with white nail polish to make two diagonal lines that cross over each other in the middle. It doesn't matter too much if the lengths are slightly different because this gets tidied up in the next step.

STEP 3) Join up the ends of each line using the striper brush again so you end up with the basic structure of the bow itself.

STEP 4) Fill in the two empty sections using white nail polish. Top tip!: if you find your nail polish brush is a bit too big to do this neatly/without going over the lines, use a dotting tool or something like a toothpick to do it instead :)

STEP 5) Now you need to place a white dot in the middle of the bow using whatever you are using as your dotting tool.

STEP 6) Finally, we're going to outline the bow. For this you can either use the striper brush (if you're feeling brave haha - it can be quite fiddly!), your dotting tool or nail art pen. I used my WAH x Models Own nail art pen in black. Firstly, outline the middle dot/circle. Then do the very edges of the bow. Lastly, make two very small lines coming out of the middle part of the bow to give it depth. Be careful not to make them too long or they won't look as realistic! Make sure everything's dry and then add a top coat if you desire. (Be careful if you've used a nail art pen - I often find they smudge if you don't leave enough drying time or have too much top coat on your brush!)

And that's it! Hope this proved useful to some of you. Don't hesitate to leave me a comment if you have any additional questions or need some tips. I'd also love to see pictures if any of you do try to create this look yourselves :)