floral nail tutorial!

Hi guys! I've had this tutorial done for a while and I kept putting it on the back burner so I could show you other things, but today, here it is!

You might remember my one pretty floral nail from my Betsey Johnson inspired nails. I loved it so much I had to do a full mani! And a tutorial!

This tutorial is a bit of stamping and a bit of freehand, so it is a tad complicated but I'm sure you all can do it with some patience!

Here's what you need to create your own floral nails:

Base coat and topcoat. I like Seche Retain and Seche Vite.

A base color and a green for your leaves. I like OPI Jade Is The New Black for leaves, and I chose Color Club Almost Famous as my background color, but you can choose any polish for your background!
You could use a creme, shimmer, glitter, anything!

Three shades of the same color for your flowers. I chose pink, but again, you can choose any color you want.
The darkest color must be opaque enough for stamping if you're going to follow my tutorial exactly.
I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri Presto Pink, Wet N Wild Tickled Pink, and OPI Dim Sum Plum.

To make roses exactly as I do them, you need to use Bundle Monster BM14. But you can do these entirely freehand, it's just harder and less realistic looking.
Of course you'll also need a stamper and scraper!

A brush like this one. I'm not sure what to call it, it is sort of an angle brush I guess. It is flat on one side and really skinny. You'll see why I like to use this one specifically later on in the tutorial.

Let's get started!

Paint your nails in your base color. You don't need to let this dry completely before moving on.

Add blobs of your medium pink color. I just do this with the brush in the polish because they do not need to be neat. Again you do not need to let this dry before moving on.

You want to make the blobs around the same size as the rose image.

Blob some light pink polish onto scrap paper.

Use the brush to add little lines in the blobs. With this particular brush, this is more like a dotting motion because the end of the brush is a line. It's easy!
Once again, no drying time needed.

For some reason I like to add my leaves before I stamp the final color.
I use the same brush for the leaves. You can make 2 lines next to each other on an angle to create the right leaf shape.
You should now let your mani fully dry (or use a fast-drying topcoat) so you can stamp on top of it.

If you don't have the rose image plate, you could finish with topcoat now because this is still sort of rose-like. You could also add the darkest pink in swirly C-shapes or more lines fanning out from the center to make it more realistic.



If you're going to stamp, read on!

This requires stamping multiple times so be patient! You must stamp the image over each blob using your darkest color which like I said, must have stamping capability.
This is what gives them the final realistic look!

Add topcoat and you're done!

Sneaking in my EOS...

And my crochet cupcake...

Here is a small step-by-step photo.
I forgot to take a picture between the leaves and the stamping so they're in the same image.
And stamping is hard on a wheel! But you get the idea.

And remember, the sky is the limit with color combos!

Here's an older combo I did! Pastels make for nice floral nails too. (On those ones I did not add the second color into the blobs before stamping, but I believe the 2 colors under the stamp is what gives the look the realistic-ness.)

You can also do it in crazy psychedelic colors! Again just one color before stamping. It's all up to you!

I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial and if you try this out, please show me! :)