Blow Art Style NOTD!

Hello!

So yesterday I came across this youtube video by DandyNails (the link goes to the giveaway that she's having! Look at those polishes!) I always enjoy trying out new techniques and this one looked like so much fun! I don't know about you but I always liked using blow pens when I was younger (even though when I think back, they were a lot of work for not much pay off!) so when I saw this technique I knew I had to try it! This post is picture heavy by the way... (Btw, I will totally be trying out the Blood Splatter ones for Halloween!! Amazing!)

Basecoat used: Sally Hansen Miracle Cure. Top coat used: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.

Firstly I painted my nails with ELF's nail polish in White. It takes about 3 coats to really give full coverage I usually find but I do love all of ELF's polishes and I've found this one to be a really nice pure white with a lovely finish to it. (You can see in this picture how messy I am when I paint my nails though!)

The second step is to put tape round your nails so it's an easier clean up later (this technique does get messy!) I'm fairly impatient so I did both my hands at once...I can tell you that it's pretty difficult to tape your other hand once your first one is all taped up...fun though!

Two essential items...kitchen towel (so you don't get polish everywhere...I still got a tiny bit on my laptop screen though!) and a post it note to keep your puddles of nail polish on.

Obviously straws are also essential but for some reason I forgot to put them in the last photo... So this is a photo of my little kit after I'd done my nails. You can see where I've put little puddles of the polish on the post it and then I've used the straws to pick some up and then blown through the straws onto your nails for the "blow pen" effect. I decided to go with lots of neon colours but in hindsight I think one or two colours would've been better....even though I still kind of liked the effect it gave... Obviously this technique does waste a bit of polish but I've got so many that I think I can spare a little bit to try new things!

You can see from this picture how messy my fingers would've gotten with five colours worth of blown nail polish on them! (I feel like I should point out that the 13 year old side of me is having a little chuckle every time I use the words "blow" or "blown"....I'm so immature sometimes, I apologise for this!) Still not sure how that bit of pink nail polish got on the underside of my hand though....

So this is the finished look on my left hand. After taking the tape off there was only a little bit of clean up to do but I'm quite impressed with my first attempt. You can see that the green went a little extreme on my ring finger, which is a little annoying.

This is the effect on my right hand. I like how each nail is different (much like with water marbling) They remind me of a Jawbreaker Gumball that I had once as a kid. I always loved the colours on it! The problem I had with these is that I clearly used too many colours. I ended up denting a couple of them a few hours later, which was really annoying! Plus with the amount of polish on my nails, once they started drying properly the polish actually shrunk a little on my nail. That meant that my actual nail was exposed and I get really annoyed with that! In hind sight I would probably leave the white to dry over night or maybe only use 2 colours on each nail (so for this one I would mix and match two of the colours on each nail.)

The colours I used were: Rimmel Lasting Finish 270 Hot Shot, MUA Shade 9, No7 Stay Perfect 220 Tangy, Rimmel Lasting Finish 180 Purple Pulse and Rimmel Lasting Finish 236 Green Grass.

So, as I dented a lot of my nails, I went a little OCD and had to take them off. I really liked this technique though and wanted to try it out with different colours. I chose blue, yellow and purple because I am wearing my comic book inspired socks and those are the colours on them! They look so awesome that I was inspired! This time round I didn't bother to tape my fingers though so you can see that the clean up will be a little more extreme this time. Instead of painting all my nails the same colour I decided to vary them up a little bit. I also found that if I used the nail polish brush to paint the end of the straw I had a little more control on the amount of polish blown onto my nail. (You can see that this wasn't a completely controlled thing...just look at my ring finger! The blue kind of went everywhere!)

You can see that I did opposite base colours on my other hand. I like this because it's not super noticeable straight away. I think this hand turned out a little better to my right hand...I just prefer it for some reason! I used a toothpick to take the excess nail polish off round my nail so that it didn't dry super thick and mess up the design when I cleaned my nails up.

After clean up! It didn't actually take that long as I only used 2 colours. I think if I'd not used tape with my first attempt with 5 colours I'd have been there all day cleaning my fingers! I know some people don't like using nail polish remover on their hands so the tape would be perfect for them, but I'm not really that fussed about nail polish remover being on my hands....also I'm lazy, so there's that too! I really love the effect on my little finger on this hand!

My right hand after the clean up! My ring finger still kind of bothers me a little but that's the risk you take with this technique! I really like my thumb on this hand.

The colours I used were: Rimmel Lasting Finish 180 Purple Pulse, 17 Lasting Fix Seabreeze and Rimmel Lasting Finish 280 Sunshine. I love the fact that I had an excuse to use the yellow one because I really do love this colour! It's so bright and cheery! I'm also going to need to repurchase the 17 one. I'm running really low and just LOVE this colour!

So there's my NOTD technique! What do you think? Are you tempted to try it? What colours would you use? As always, I love reading all your comments so let me know what you think (even if you don't like the effect!)

Until next time,

xoxo