laurel

Nails, Tutorials

DIY Nail Decals

This week I'll be showing you all how to make your own custom nail decals. I know this isn't a super unique tutorial, but I figured I'd still make it because it's something that I enjoy doing, and maybe someone will learn something new from my tutorial. You never know, someone might stumble upon this post and it's the first time they've seen this technique! Or they could be like me and before doing a specific technique, they research the crap out of it, looking at multiple tutorials so they can pick and choose which techniques to use to fit their needs. The list of supplies for this project

 

Step 1I eyeballed the size and shape of my nails and drew them out onto a piece of paper. If you do the same, you can draw your design inside of the nail like I did for two of these nails.

I wanted to paint a floral pattern on the rest of them, so on the right you can see some little  sketches I did to use as a reference. You could totally just pull up a reference from online, or a book, etc.

 

Step 2Cut the paper so it can fit inside of the bag and stick it inside.

 

Here are the steps I did for this specific floral design.

 

Step 4Once the design was dry, I coated each one with some top coat.

 

Here are some more examples of different decals you can make.

 

Step 5Remove the decals with your tweezers and, if needed, trim them to size. With mine I painted over the lines I sketched out so I had to trim quite a bit to fit them to my nails.

 

Step 6Paint your nails with your base coat, and then one coat of your background color, if you're using one. Let those dry completely, and then apply a layer of top coat, or as in my case, another layer of the background color.

 

Step 7Let it dry for about a minute or until it's tacky and then stick the decal on.

 

Step 8Gently pat/smooth it down. Repeat for all of your nails.

 

Step 9Finally apply another coat of topcoat, making sure to hit all the edges to seal them up.

 

Finished!And here they are all finished!

 

I hope you enjoyed this weeks tutorial! Stay tuned next week for more~

 

Clothes

Laurel Earwarmers

I've been watching the Olympics for the past few days, and even though it's summer time, it inspired me to make these ear warmers. The warmers are inspired by the laurel wreaths that the winning Olympians would be crowned with. I had just learned the crocodile stitch and it ended up being the perfect stitch for this project because of how much it looks like leaves.

Here it is. A front view, side view and back view.

And here's how it looks being worn:

Front, side and back. I actually really like how it turned out and can't wait for it to get cold so I can wear it around!