Tie-Dye Nails

Tie-Dye is becoming increasingly popular in high street fashion so why not reflect this in your nails? It's a summery and adaptable look which you can use with any colors.

Preparation

For this look you need things you can probably find around the house:

  • A bowl you don't mind getting messy
  • Pipette (to drip the nail polish as you'll see later on - though just dabbing the nail polish brush into the water works fine too)
  • Room temperature water
  • Multiple nail polishes
  • Tape
  • Toothpicks

Instructions

  1. Firstly you need to fill the bowl with room temperature water. Don't fill the bowl too full or too little, fill it with an inch or so from the top (but it depends on the size of your bowl really).
  2. Paint your nails with a base coat. It could be a colour or a clear base coat, it doesn't matter really, but personally I think using a white base coat looks really good with this look.
  3. Next tape around the nail to prevent any nail polish getting on your finger. This may sound weird and unnecessary but without it you will have tie-dye stained fingers. It's best to do one finger at a time instead of all at once as it'll make the rest of this process hard to do and try to avoid getting any of the tape on your nail.
  4. Take the colours you want for your nails (I recently used different shades of purple and blue which came out really well and neon colours also look great) and using the pippette drip them into the water. The colours will spread out and go thin, but this is what you want. One or two drops of each colour is enough as if you use too much the polish will go onto your nails incredibly thick, run, ruin the pattern and take a very long time to dry.
  5. Once you've added all the colours you want use the take the toothpick and move the colours around to create a pattern you like. Then dip your nail into the section of the pattern you like the most.
  6. Hold you nail under the water (but not for too long) and using a clean toothpick collect all the left over polish on the water. Twirling the toothpick makes it easier. Make sure you remove all the nail polish or else it leaves a skin that stops the effect working next time.
  7. Lift out the nail and let it dry. Once it has, remove the tape which should have prevented the nail polish going all over your hand but if it has just use some nail polish remover to tidy it up.
  8. Repeat for all your nails.

And Enjoy!

You may need to practise these a few times to get it right, but as you get better you can develop fancier patterns and will learn the best nail polishes to use for the best colours and effects. Enjoy this simple summer look and have fun with it.

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