Neon Splatter Mani + Tutorial!

Happy Friday! Today I have something totally out of the norm for me, nail art AND a tutorial...yes, you are on The PolishAholic, I promise you didn't wander somewhere else lol

A while ago, probably about a year ago, I posted a blood splatter mani, I would link it but the pictures pain me to look at, you can go back and find it if you want though lol. I've been wanting to do that mani again and finally started toying with it the other day, if you follow me on twitter you might have seen a twitpic of my new improved blood splatter mani. I'll add a better photo of it at the very bottom of this post. When I posted the twitpic I got a lot of people asking how I did it so I decided to do a tutorial for you guys!

For the tutorial I wanted to mix it up and use summery neons, the result I think is pretty fun! I hope you like it as much as I do! I used OPI Alpine Snow as a base and the splatters are China Glaze Pink Voltage, China Glaze Kiwi Cool-Ada and China Glaze Sun Worshiper.

Here is what this will look like all done, fun right?!? I like this kind of nail art because it takes no skill and is practically impossible to mess up aka. the only kind of nail art I am good at!

Alright, tutorial time. Hope this makes sense...this is a first for me! What you will need:

Scotch Tape
Paper Plate
Straws (I use 1 straw per color, so for this I used 3 straws)
Fun polish colors to splatter on your nails!

Once you paint on your base color let it dry completely then tape around your nail (this nail art gets messy!). It will look like the picture below, I wrap the pieces of tape completely around my finger. Excuse the black base color in this one, originally I was going to use black as a base but the neons didn't look so great over it so I decided to use white as a base color instead.

p.s. I never realized how hard it was to take a picture of tape, there is a piece going across right above my cuticle but you can't really see it :D

Once I get all the fingers on 1 hand taped up I grab the first color I want to splatter onto my nail. I typically do one hand at a time, mostly because trying to hold a straw with your fingers covered in tape is no easy task! For one hand I put 5-6 drops of the polish on a paper plate. You won't use that much on one hand but you need to be able to dip the straw into the polish. Below is the amount I use. If the plate does not work for you try dipping the straw directly into the bottle of polish. I don't like to use that method because I tend to dip the straw in more than I need to and I waste more polish...but it is a little easier, especially if you are having a problem getting enough polish on the straw!

Alright, now the fun part! You dip your straw into the polish and then aim it at your nails and blow through the un-dipped end to splatter the polish onto your nail. I find that a strong fast puff of air works best (lol). If it doesn't work the first time keep trying, sometimes I don't get enough polish on the straw and when I blow to splatter it onto my nail nothing happens...just dip the straw into the polish and try again!  I do one hand at a time one color at a time, so I will do all the orange on one hand then pick my next color and follow the same steps.

Once you are done with all your colors your nail/finger will probably look like the photo below. See why I use the tape, cleanup without it would suck!

Once you are done carefully peel the tape off. There will still probably be polish on the skin around the nail, below is what it looked like when I peeled off the tape. To get the polish off my skin & cuticle I pull out my trusty cleanup brush (a cheap-o angled eyeliner brush from Target) and acetone. If you don't have acetone you can use regular polish remover, it will just take a little more effort. I dip my brush into the acetone and remove whatever polish is on the skin and cuticle. For a great tutorial on how to clean up like I did on this mani check out Polish Or Perish!

Hopefully that all made sense, if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments!

Edited 6/27/11 to add some info about the straws I use. I've been getting the question a lot so I thought I should update this post with the info! I use drinking straws I bought at Ikea, I bought them a while back because it was $1.50 for 200 of them and I'm cheap lol. They are on Ikea's website here. They are a bit smaller than a regular straw you would get somewhere like McDonalds but bigger than something like a coffee stirrer. I pulled out a couple straws I had to compare the size which you can see in the photo below. If you guys are having problems with your straws I would keep trying a bunch of different ones until you find one that works for you...I didn't try using these Ikea straws until my 3rd try doing these mani's!

Here is the blood splatter mani I mentioned earlier! For this I used Sally Hansen Without A Stitch as a base and Mac Obey Me for the splatter! I think adding these pictures is a great example of the different looks you can get by doing this...the splatters look totally different. It's all in the way you blow the polish onto the nail!

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