I've been rocking snowflakes on my own nails a lot recently, and they were our most requested Christmas nail art tutorial. There's no doubt that they make for a fabulously festive mani, but there's one weeny drawback: they are fiddly as hell to draw by hand.
Festive but fiddly
I use nail art pens to freehand mine (and if you happen to have some, you can always use them to follow the steps below) but since I was mostly asked about creating Christmas looks without specialist tools, that's what we'll be focusing on!
You will need
Base coat
Selection of polishes in your desired colours
Top coat (you know me, I'm all about the Seche Vite)
Cocktail stick
Dotting tools (or biros)
To begin, apply base coat to clean, dry, shaped nails, followed by 1-2 coats of your chosen base colour. If you have a bit of time, allow to dry - this will prevent the nail art you're going to do from dragging the polish beneath.
Then...
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LOOK ONE
This is the more difficult of the two looks, so don't panic if you can't get the hang of it immediately. You may find that holding the cocktail stick at about a 45 angle and "floating" the polish from the cocktail stick onto the nail while moving the stick to essentially pull the polish into the desired shapes gives the best results. Try practising on some scrap paper first to nail (sorry) your technique.
- Decant a little polish onto a suitable receptacle (a scrap of tinfoil is perfect for this job.)
- Dip the tip of the cocktail stick into the decanted polish - you want to pick up a little bead of polish on the end of the stick. Too much polish and you won't be able to get any sort of crispness or definition to your design; too little and it won't work at all.
- Draw a cross shape, then add an "X" on top of it; the arms should all be of equal-ish length.
- Add detailing like these little arrow tails and dots to the outer peripheries.
- Repeat for multiple snowflakes, and remember: no two snowflakes are the same, so don't stress about trying to make them matchy!
- Seal with topcoat to protect your design.
LOOK TWO
Admittedly, this is more of a snowfall than a snowflake look, but then it is an awful lot easier to achieve. Try using white for the nail art over a red, green, or shimmering navy background for maximum effect.
- Dot on random spot details in varying sizes using dotting tools or two biros with different sized nibs (see the polka dot tutorial here if you need a refresher.)
- Add a couple of snowflake-like details - one on each nail is probably sufficient - if desired with the cocktail stick. For the ones above, I drew a long central vertical stem, then a shorter horizontal crossline about 1/3 of the way along its length, and finished with a small "x" through the intersection.
- Seal with topcoat to protect your design.
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Regardless of which design you try, I'd suggest leaving plenty of free space on the nail between the snowflakes to prevent the design looking crowded.
Are you feeling the love for snowflake nails?
