Pushing away the grey: Bright Zebra Nails

It's been getting grey and miserable outside... Utterly bleak to be perfectly honest.  Rain.  Wet.  Grey...  Even the leaves are looking muted, the ones that are still clinging on to their green-ness look washed out, and the fallen ones are just too soggy to be anything more than mush.

So I decided to buck the brown-grey trend.  Just because the weather is turning doesn't mean that I have to pack away my summer-bright nail varnish.  So think week I've decided to brighten up my nails with a spot of zebra print.  But to help banish the autumn gloom, my zebra is turquoise.

Zebra print is a really easy effect to achieve - simply pick your base colour (in my case this was Barry M's Pure Turquoise) and once it is completely dry it's time for the creative fun.

Black and white tend to work best, however any really contrasting should work.  Simply drag the brush of your secondary colour from the outside edge of your nail towards the middle of the nail in a line.  Don't go beyond the middle of the nail, otherwise you start to lose the zebra-edge. And don't try and make it too straight or even, in fact, the wonkier the better.  Then all you need to do is continue down the nail.

The effect works best when you move from one side of the nail to the other: once you have completed one zebra stripe move to the other side - move from left to right and back again so you end up with a little overlap in the centre of the nail.

Once completely dry (I didn't wait, which is why once of my nails has 'fuzzy' stripes), seal with a top coat - and be proud!