Leopard Print Nail Tutorial

       Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend! I've been sick all weekend with sinus stuff. I haven't felt horrible, which is good. Just congested and stuffy. I'm sure you all wanted to know that... Anyway, today's blog post is a leopard print nail tutorial. I want to apologize to you all for not posting more nail tutorials on here lately. I just have been feeling so uninspired the past month. I've felt like every kind of nail art I've tried has not turned out right, or I've had to re-do them a million times to get them looking the way I want. It just stopped being fun for me for a while. So, I stepped back from it for a bit so that I could recharge. Everybody has those moments. But finally, I've re-found my love for nail art. I've gotten so much inspiration from Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram pages I follow, that I'm going to have tons of nail tutorials coming up for you all! So get excited!! Enough babbling. Let's get into the tutorial. All tips will be listed in the captions below each picture. Enjoy!

Here's what I used from left to right: Milani Nail Art striper in "Black Sketch"; OPI - You Don't Know Jacques; OPI - Tickle My France-y; OPI - Alpine Snow; Seche Vite; Orly Bonder. You can choose whatever colors you'd like to do your leopard print. This nail art looks amaaaaaazing in every color.

First up, I applied a coat of the Orly Bonder Rubberized Base Coat.

For the color base coat, I chose OPI - Alpine Snow. This is my all time favorite white nail polish!

I applied two coats of this polish. It's okay to get out of the lines. We'll clean it up next.

To clean up, I used this small angled brush from Maybelline and nail polish remover. I went around the edges of my nails and took care of any mistakes that were made.

Here they are all cleaned up!

To create the first part of the leopard print, I chose two colors. First up is OPI - Tickle My France-y.

Take the brush, and get most of the nail polish off. Then dab the brush onto the nail and make random shapes. They can be as big or as small as you want. You just touch the brush to your nail and drag it a bit. Placement doesn't matter. Just pick a spot and dab. Now, I am only putting two dabs of this color on each nail because I have another color I want to use as well. If you want to use one color, then repeat this step until you feel the negative space on your nail is filled to your liking.

Keep on going...

... until you've done all of your nails.

 

For my second color, I used OPI - You Don't Know Jacques.

I just did the same step with this color as I did with the last one. I dabbed and dragged the polish onto whatever negative space was left on the nail. I don't fill my nail up completely, because we still have to outline these spots of color, and we need room to do that without it looking cluttered.

Keep going with the random spots/shapes...

... until all of your nails are done.

For the next step, I used this Milani Nail Striper in "Black Sketch." This is the easiest tool to use when doing any kind of detail work on your nails. You can use a regular black nail polish with the normal sized brush if you'd like. I just find the striper to be way easier and more precise. These are cheap too!

All you do for this step is take the striper, and make two curved lines around the original spot you made. You don't want to make a complete circle around the main spots. And you don't have to make these outlines perfect. That's what makes it look more like leopard print. :)

Again, I took the striper, and made two curved lines around the original spots. See how random and imperfect mine are? They don't have to be perfect. Just do the best you can, and they'll turn out great!

After making the two curved lines with the striper around each spot, I took what was left on the striper, and dabbed small dots on whatever negative space I had left on the nail, just to fill it up a bit more. You can see those dots on my pointer finger. Then I went on and made the "outlines" of my spots on the middle finger.

Then again, in the negative space I had left on this nail, I used the striper with no additional product and dabbed small dots onto the nail, as shown above.

I kept going...

... until each nail was done. You can see how imperfect my "outline lines" are. And that's okay :).

You can see how using the two different colors against the white base gives it more contrast. I love it!

And finally, I used Seche Vite as my top coat. Five minutes later, I was ready to go!

Here's the final look!

       And there you have it! Leopard print nails! I absolutely love this look, and it's one of my favorite nail looks to do. It doesn't take too long once you get the hand of it. And you have the cutest mani ever when you're finished! I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, or on my Facebook page "Beautymark." And go follow me on Instagram @__beautymark__ and on Pinterest here: http://www.pinterest.com/bbytabitha/nail-me/
 I hope you all have an awesome week, and I'll see you soon!


                                  XOXO - Tabitha