Gift Nails Tutorial

       Hey everyone! Today's post is a tutorial on this really cute "gift" manicure. I did my nails about three different times, with three different looks, and finally was happy with this one. I'm not sure what my deal has been lately... I've been really disappointed in almost every manicure I've done. I need to find some new inspiration, stat! If you all have any ideas of manicures you'd like to see, please leave them in the comments below and I will try to get them up for you! Now, let's get started. All tips will be in the captions under each picture. Enjoy!

I started out by swiping a thin coat of this Orly Bonder Rubberized Basecoat on my nails. Love this stuff!

Then I took this OPI Liquid Sand polish in the color "Solitaire" and painted all my nails except the ring fingers. We'll do a little accent nail with those in a minute.

Now I will say, as much as I love this polish, this look would've come out a lot cleaner looking had I used a creme or jelly polish instead of a textured one. I just wanted to give it a little something extra.

Next, I took a small angled brush and some nail polish remover and cleaned up around the edges of each nail to make them look nice and crisp!

For the accent nail, I used this awesome glitter polish by Pure Ice in the color "Darkside." The picture doesn't even show how sparkly this polish is. In person it is amaaaaazing!

I painted a couple coats of "Darkside" on each ring finger. I was careful to not get the edges too messy, because glitter polish is REALLY hard to clean up.

Now for the "gift" or "bow" color. You can choose any color you'd like to make your bow's. I chose purple because it matched my Christmas tree decorations :). This is "Creative Fantasy" by China Glaze. I also used a really thin nail art brush to do this. You don't have to use one of these at all. I just have really small nails, so I wanted a brush that would be more precise.

First step is to draw a vertical line from the cuticle to the tip of the nail. I drew mine off center, but you can draw your line anywhere you'd like to create the desired look.

Step two is to draw a horizontal line from one side of the nail to the other. Again, I chose to draw mine off center. Creating the "bow" or "gift" in the center of the nail would be really cute too!

Step three is to draw the "bow" of your gift. You basically draw a half circle from the horizontal line to the vertical line. You do that on each side of the vertical line. It's okay if you don't get them to match up exactly. That gives it more character!

Last step is to draw the ribbon of your bow... even though you make your bow with ribbon? You know what I mean, haha. For this you just draw a line from the corner of where the two lines connect, diagonally downwards towards the tip of your nail. Typing it out makes it sound complicated. But you can see how it looks in the picture. It's very simple :)

On to the next nail. Again, draw a vertical line from the cuticle to the tip of your nail.

Then draw a horizontal line from one side of the nail to the other.

Draw the half circles from the horizontal line to the vertical line.

Then draw the ribbon of your bow. You can see I made the ribbon part look a little different on the middle nail than the index finger nail. I like it when they don't match up perfectly.

Just repeat those steps on the rest of your nails and you have your "gift" manicure! Not as hard as it looks, right?

       And there you have it! I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below or on my Facebook page "Beautymark." I will see you next week, and I hope you all have an amazing weekend! Thanks for reading!



                                            XOXO - Tabitha