Get the Look: Turquoise Nails

 Nails Inc (Don't know the shade as it came with a bunch of fellow Nails Inc miniatures), Barry M Gold Foil and O.P.I Black Onyx

Go under the cut to find out how to get the look!

So this manicure came out of trying to think of nail art ideas I could execute without using any of my new nail art brushes or dotters but rather household items.  Why you ask?  Well MoneySupermarket are currently running a nail art competition, encouraging nail art blogs to create manicures using things found about the house so that the cost of the manicure can be low.  

What you need for this manicure is:

1. Nail polish (that's a no brainer but yeah, a good turquoise colour, gold and black.
2. 2 bunches of Cling film (or Saran Wrap for our American cousins) and tin foil.
3. Cocktail stick (or toothpick, again for our American cousins).
4. Cotton buds and nail varnish remover.
5. Top coat (I use Seche Vite).

I basically follow The Beauty Department's Turquoise Stone Tutorial but I have done both gold and black and add a final step but yeah, here we go :-)

1. Remove all other polish from your nails and put on your base coat of choice (I use OPI Nail Envy at the moment but Essie's base coat is pretty good as well)
2. Now apply your base colour, which is the turquoise.  Do as many coats as you need for a mostly opaque nail.  If, like me, your polish was a bit on the patch side, it doesn't matter as we will be layering polishes on top in a few steps anyway.
3. Allow polish to dry.  I usually apply a thin layer of top coat at this stage to seal in the base colour but this is just personal preference.
4. Once dry, get your cling film, bunch it together loosely so that you have a somewhat flat surface acting like a stamp coming out of your fist.  Lightly paint gold nail polish on this end of the cling film and dab onto a piece of tin foil.  This will remove the larger spodges of nail polish so that the nail is not covered in gold, you are going for a more 'gilded' look.
5. Lightly dab onto each finger, applying more polish onto the cling film when needed (and removing the excess when needed as well).
6. Leave for a minute and repeat steps 4 and 5 but using black polish.  I would use even less nail polish when applying the black to the nail as you only some black on your nail.
7. To create some black 'veins' in the stone, put some black polish onto some tin foil, dip your cocktail stick into it and gently draw some lines.  Don't do too many, only what you feel is needed as the design won't look as natural if there is too much detail going on.
8. Once complete, use a cotton bud soaked in nail polish remover to clean up the excess polish that is probably in every available crevice on your hands.  I recommend the pointed and flat double ended cotton buds that you can get from Boots and Superdrug as the clean up a lot more efficiently but regular cotton buds will do (I used them for ages before I discovered the other shaped ones.  The great thing is that there is no difference in price!  You can usually find the pointed and flat ended cotton buds by the nail polish removers).

I hope this has been somewhat useful and if there is any step that needs explained, just drop me a comment or something.  It's a technique that's been floating about for ages and there are a gazillion tutorials on it but I've never seen both gold and black being applied together with cling film (instead of the water spray technique which looks all kinds of rocking).  

In my opinion, I was a bit heavy handed when applying the gold and black but it was my first time using the cling film technique so be kind!  I'd love to see how any of you get on with this and remember, this could probably be turned into any kind of semi-precious stone, just switch up the colour combos. 

Have a lovely weekend and see you later :D