Ladybugs - A nail art tutorial

Good morning everyone!

Recently I discovered the wonderful fun of nail art! I've always loved painting my nails, but to date even tho my polish collection was impressive, the most outrageous thing Id ever done is paint them all differing colours.
One of my good friends posted me a box of bits to play with and I have to say, I am totally hooked. A lot of people on my facebook page have said they wish they knew how, have no idea how or cant do fun things because they are new to it all. Im here to say Nuh huh! Nail art for the most part, is EASY! It just requires a little practice. I had overwhelming requests for a tutorial on the ladybirds I had on last week, and so well, here it is.

The original image isnt the greatest, its the only one I took and by the time I decided to go ahead with the tutorial Id already worn them for a week and they were looking less then perfect. I really wanted to have this up earlier, but I've been out all week with a cold and haven't managed to blog a thing!

If this is something people would like to see regularly, please let me know. I'm more then happy to add up my designs when I do them. They won't be anything amazingly awesome, because hello, beginner here, but you know me, firm believer in sharing knowledge regardless of skill level. Everyone can learn from someone else!

So lets get started. These are the supplies I used. Polish remover, a base and top coat, black, white, red and green, a thin brush, a dotting tool and my handy dandy remover pen (best invention ever!!)

Start with a base coat. I used Ulta3 for this.

Do one coat of white, this will help your green pop if it isnt quite opaque enough. I used BYS white from the white/red duo, which I picked up in Kmart for 50 cents! Bargain!

One coat of green. I used Ulta3's Tahitian lime.

I didn't have a pastel green colour, so I mixed some of the Tahitian lime with a little white to make one. We'll be using this for the leaf veins.

Using your brush and the green we just mixed paint on one stripe across your nail, for the leaves main vein. I used different directions on each nail.

Add the rest of the leaf veins using your brush, starting from the middle line and dragging the brush outwards.

Add a large red dot for the ladybugs body. I actually just dotted this on with the end of the brush. The red I used has a glittery look to it, and is a Revlon polish, but the bottle is so worn there are no other details. Its one Ive had since I was a teen.

Using the larger end of the dotting tool add the head with black. I did 2 dots super close to each other and used the end of the tool to join them.

Using the smaller end of the dotting tool put some little black spots on the ladybug. I did 4 on some, and 3 on others, depending on how big its body was.

Using white, dot on the eyes with the smaller end of the dotting tool. Now, rather then trying to re-dot again with an even smaller black, I found if I pushed the white dots on with a little force then when I lifted it up, the black from the layer below showed through in the very centre of the white dot. Of course you could also gently add black dots to the top if you have a small enough tool or toothpick.

Then just a top coat once its all dried. For that I used Seche Vite Fast dry top coat which I love! Then just give them a bit of a clean up with a cotton bud or remover pen, or even a brush in polish remover, whichever way you like to roll.

Thats it, repeat for the rest of your nails. Told you it was easy!