Nautical/Floral nail art

 I love nail art, and want my blog to be partially swatches but I also want to include nail art and tutorials.

I saw an amazing nail blogger Paulina's Passion create this and I fell in love with it. The problem was, for ages I didn't have the right dark blue! Now that I do, I decided I wanted to give these a go.

Base Coat, OPI Alpine Snow, OPI I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw, OPI Pink Friday, OPI Koala Berry, Essie Navigate Her

I started off with a white base using two coats of OPI's Alpine Snow. It's a pretty good white, I get it streak free on two coats. After watching about 20 minutes of Revenge (best show ever??) to let it fully dry, I cut off a crazy amount of tiny pieces of nail striping tape. It's best to cut all the pieces before you start sticking them on your nails.

I tried to have an even thickness of white and blue stripes. I didn't have a certain amount of stripes I did per nail, but just spaced them equally apart.

I then used my new OPI I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw for the blue. I painted one nail at a time and then removed all the tape before going onto the next nail. If you wait too long to remove the tape the nail polish will get sticky.

After watching the other half of Revenge, I applied a top coat. It's really important you wait a long time to give it enough time to dry. If you don't wait long enough the blue nail polish may drag on your nail. The reason I added a top coat was to create an even surface to apply the roses.

I used a large dotting tool and OPI's Pink Friday (light pink) to apply dots around my nails. I just played around with it and put them where I felt they looked good. I did have a little mistake on my index finger where I left the striping tape on a bit too long... I just used the roses to cover that up!  I added two coats for the dots just so I couldn't see any of the blue lines through.

I then used a small nail art brush and a dark pink nail polish to add detail to the flowers. I used OPI's Koala Bear-y. I just squiggled some lines around the pink dots.

Finally I used Essie's Navigate Her and a dotting tool to add some leaves. It doesn't show up very well, but makes a huge difference.

Finish off with a top coat. Again, leave enough time so it doesn't smudge. I usually watch a youtube video, I've been loving MissHollyBerries! I just applied Koala Bear-y on my thumb, because I find the striping tape such a pain to do!!