Lana Del Rey Nails: Tutorial

Last winter, Lana Del Rey released her awesome music video for Born to Die. When I watched it, one of the first things I noticed about it were the nails (obviously). I promptly recreated the design on my nails and posted about it on the blog. The nails were tipped with a red Vv" outlined in gold glitter. Here is a video snapshot I took of the video:

I can see that a lot of you have been checking out that post, so I thought I might show you, step-by-step, how I recreated this look. 

What you will need for this manicure:

1. Clear base coat 

2. Nude polish (optional)

3. Red polish

4. Gold glitter polish

5. Top coat

6. Small paintbrush

Obviously, you can change up the red polish and gold glitter to other combinations if you wish!

1. Start with a clear or nude base

Here, I simply did a clear base coat on the nail. Use a clear polish if your nails are healthy and not stained - mine are slightly yellowed around the tips, but that will be covered by red polish for this manicure. If you are less inclined to show your natural nail, feel free to use a nude polish instead. 

2. Dot the middle of the tip

Using your small paintbrush and red polish, use a dot to roughly mark where the middle of the nail is on the tip.

3. Dot the middle of the sides
Using your small paintbrush and red polish, use two dots on each nail to mark the middle of the nails on  both edges.

4. Create the "V" shape
This is the slightly trickier part, but the dots are there to make it easier by guiding your brush. With the small paintbrush, connect each side dot from step 3 to the middle dot from step 2. Here, I usually round the lines slightly, creating a bulge and making the "v" slightly concave. However, if you prefer, you can make these lines straight but it takes a little more patience and steady-handedness.

5. Fill in the "V" shapes
Here, you can either use your small paintbrush, the polish brush, or a combination of the two. If using the polish brush, be sure not to stray beyond the lines of the "v"! Cleaning up could be quite the task here (you might have to re-start). To be safe, you could roughly fill in the larger areas with the polish brush and then fill in the leftover, hard to reach spots, with the small paintbrush.

6. Outline the "V" in gold glitter

This part may seem daunting because of the thin line, but it isn't. This is because glitter tends to be forgiving when creating delicate shapes. With glitter, it is not very obvious if the lines are not perfect and the individual glitter bits can be pushed around with a toothpick and pushed into the right shape. That is why I recommend using a glitter for the outlining as opposed to a metallic or opaque polish - glitter camouflages imperfections!

There you go - the infamous Lana Del Rey manicure. In my opinion, this is one of the best manicures out there right now. It is universally flattering and elongates the fingers. Plus, it is pretty sexy. Try out for yourself and you will see!

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Milkface Mother's Day Manicures!

As part of Mother's day celebrations, we set up in Milkface's Ottawa South location to give away free manicures (for Mothers especially, but anyone could have stopped by!). It was a beautiful sunny Sunday and we loved to give some Mum's a nice little gift and be surrounded by adorable babies at the same time!

Check out some of the fun manicures we came up with:

A bright Lisa Frank-inspired tiger print nail:

The awesome Nina rawwring for the camera!

A beautiful deep dark eggplant version of our fairy nails

Super fun and bright yellow and pink modern French tip manicure

The always classic and beautiful nude Fairy Nails

A great colour combo - turquoise and neon green leopard print! Love it.

Here is Kristina hard at work on a set of Fairy nails!

We had a great time working with Milkface...it's a beautiful shop and the lovely ladies who work there are so awesome to hang out with. It was great to see all the Moms getting the help they need picking out mom-and-baby supplies. We would love to manicures there again! We hope all you Mommies had a great weekend!

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Titanic Manicure

If you haven't already heard, this past Sunday (April 15th) marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Also, the movie was re-released in theaters (in 3-D!). Since I grew up in the height of the Leo-obsession, this movie is a serious part of my life (and so is my love for Leo). I remember going to see it in theaters when it first came out. I was only in grade 4 but, at the time, I thought that I truly grasped the sadness and intensity of the story. At one point, I had to leave the theater to recuperate and take a breath because I was trying so hard to hold back sobbing.
Last week, I went to see it again with my sister and a few of my girl friends and, well, we sobbed the entire time. In quiet moments, you could hear the entire theater sobbing. Why do we do this to ourselves??? It's just soooo good in a horribly sad way. If you've seen the movie before, watch this video and I dare you not to cry.

*Deep breath* Ok. So, I created a manicure inspired by the front of the ship as seen on the movie poster. It has a similar shape to the Lana Del Rey manicure which I absolutely love and really looks awesome and flattering on the nails. 

The movie poster

I really love this one! I definitely like manicures "inspired by" objects rather than just painting tiny objects onto the nail. Sometimes tiny art is really neat but, at other times, I like to work with the nail shape to create an interesting pattern.

And, just in case you're interested, the following represent all the reasons why I can watch that movie over and over again:

This...

...and this

...this too

...oh, and this above all else.

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Nude with Minty Polka Dots

With all the beautiful soft pastels popping up for Spring and Summer, I couldn't resist trying something out on my nails. Plus, I just got a package of dotting tools in the mail and I was so excited to try them out!
I found them on eBay, and there were very reasonably priced. (See, fun nail art can be totally affordable, folks!) Five of them came in the package and they are made of plastic and have metal tips on both ends. One side of the tools all have the same size of metal tip and the other ends have 5 varying sizes of metal tips. They seem like they will be very versatile for different sized dots - I can't wait to experiment!

The tools actually seem quite robust considering their price, so I am curious to see how long they last. I'm keeping it pretty simple with this manicure, but I love the delicateness of the line of dots. I used Essie's Sand Tropez and Turquoise and Caicos.

Such a sweet colour combination - so perfect for Spring!

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Sweet Sixteen Nail Party

This weekend, we had the super fun opportunity to participate in an adorable sweet sixteen birthday party. We set up our table and supplies and gave the girls awesome nail-art while the others played charades, ate pizza, and laughed, chatted, and giggled. Check out what the girls asked for!

These nails, belonging to the birthday girl, are accented with neat sugar skulls!

A beautiful pale pink and pastel blue version of the Lana Del Rey nails:

Adorable yellow roses on a periwinkle blue background:

Matryoskha dolls on lilac - cute!

Tiny pink hearts French manicure on a beautiful nude:

The classic, always glamourous, Lana Del Rey:

Sparkly purple Fairy Nails:

A really cool metallic slate gray version of the Lana Del Rey nails:

Here we are painting away!

We also set up a birthday photo booth - here are some of the pics...

Some of the girls (and a mystery guest) showing off their manicures!

Overall, what a sweet time! We simply cannot wait to do another party like this.

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