YOUR NAIL ART

We know that you love all things beauty as much as we do so we thought why not bring you lot in as honorary beauty experts? We recently asked our @elleuk Twitter followers to share with us pictures of their DIY nail art. The response was staggering and we were blown away by some of the designs so we asked our favourites to explain how to create them. 

For more nail art ideas, click here...

Each nail has its own design. Paint your thumbs with Orly Nail Polish in Beach Cruiser. Once dry use a nail art pen (I used Orly Instant Artist pen in Crisp White) to hand-draw a cross in the middle of the nail.

Paint your index fingers with Orly Nail Polish in Melt Your Popsicle. Allow to dry and use an Orly Jet Black Instant Artist pen to paint a ‘drizzle’ shape over the tip. Use a lot of polish to give a 3D effect to the finish.

Coat your middle fingers in Orly Foil FX Polish in Luxe. Use your Jet Black Instant Artists pen to draw the centre line and triangle at the base of the nail. Put a small drop of Orly Nail Polish in Beach Cruiser into the centre of the triangle.

Your ring fingers require a steady hand. Paint three triangular shapes onto the nail using Orly Nail Polish in Melt Your Popsicle, Beach Cruiser and Glowstick. Once dry use the paint pen to sketch in two lines where the colours meet.

Paint your baby fingers in Orly Nail Polish in Dayglow. Once dry take the nail art pen and draw on a diamond. The diamond shape is based on a triangle with a rectangle sitting on top. Then just add in the diagonal lines.  

For this Cath Kidston inspired design start off by painting your nails in a pale blue.

You need three shades of pink varnish for the petals. Place a blob of the darkest shade onto the nail and then apply the two lighter shades with cocktail sticks. This doesn’t need to be too neat, just aim for a rough petal shape.

Then take a green nail varnish and with another cocktail stick paint on the leaves.

This step isn’t essential but it’s nice to finish the pattern off with a touch of yellow and a lighter green (again applied with a cocktail stick) to add a highlight to the leaves.

Wait for everything to dry before applying a top coat. 

Paint two coats of white nail varnish over your nails to create a base.

Using a steady hand and a nail art dotting tool (you can buy these on eBay for as little as £2 for 6) begin painting on your bright colours (I chose the colours in the rainbow) in diagonal stripes. Chose strong colours over sheer shades for a bolder look. Depending on the length of your nails you should be able to fit around eight rows.

Allow to dry and then seal with a topcoat. I prefer to use Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat because it makes my nails really shiny.  

Firstly apply a good base coat to your nails. I like Rimmel 3 in 1 Base.

Paint two coats of your chosen red over your nails. I used Barry M Nail Paint in Bright Red.

Take a dotting tool and begin to dot a white varnish onto the red. I used Barry M Nail Paint in Matt White. Try and keep some uniformity to your design, I opted to dot them in diagonal rows.  

Once everything is dry paint two coats of top coat over your design to make your nails really shiny. I used Rimmel 3 in 1 Top Coat. 

Paint each nail with a fun, bright colour. No two nails should be the same shade. There really is no rule with what colours to use, just pick your favourites.

Use a nail art dotting tool (I bought mine from eBay) to dot on a white polish to start the eyes.

Once the white is dry use a clean dotting tool to dot on a small amount of black polish onto the white to make the pupils.

Finish off with a top-coat.