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!

How to: Fun and funky nails for Easter

So the weather is completely miserable.  The sky is grey, it's bitterly cold and, for heaven's sake it is snowing.

 

To make myself feel better for the fact that it is snowing in March I decided that some bright, fun nails would make me feel better. And yeh, they have certainly made me feel cheery.

 

After applying a base coat to protect the nails I selected four easter-egg colours. I raided my nail varnish for colours that most closely resembled mini eggs and I settled on a pink, yellow, blue and orange combo.  Paint one nail each colour leaving your ring finger on each hand. Your ring finger will be your feature nail. Paint this one black.

 

In Primark I found nail art pens for the handsome sum of £2 which are great for fine work. They come a sets of two colours, and I can really recommend the set that comes with the black and white pens as they are useful for contrast.

 

On each coloured nail use a nail art pen, start in the middle of the nail and do four dots down the centre. Then in repeat the dots to fill the nail.

 

Once your dots have dried move to your feature nail.  Using white carefully draw a circle on the edge of your nail. The circle should fill roughly a quarter of your nail, and this will be your bunny's head. Whilst the polish is still tacky I added a pink gem in the centre for the rabbits nose. Finally I drew in some  ears and gave the rabbit some eyes with a quick dot from the nail art pens.

 

Seal the whole lot with a layer of top coat and you're good to go!

 

How cute are they?!