Wednesday 2 January 2013

Galaxy Nails

Hello again!
As promised, here is a tutorial for my version of galaxy nails.

What you'll need:
Basic black, white, and several galaxy-esque colours.
I use purple, blues, and a green for highlighting. I like to use a couple of polishes that have some shimmer to them, to help with the starry night effect. Here, the navy and purple are each shimmery.
Fine glitter polish, the one here is NYC 'Starry Silver Glitter'
A toothpick, and a cosmetic sponge. The same sort you use for gradients.

Remember, for a style like this, you can really use any colours that are even vaguely spacey. I prefer the darker colours, with a hint of lightness cos of the way they blend, but I've seen some truly excellent galaxy nails in pinks and purples, in yellows and oranges.



First you'll paint your base coat (especially important when using dark colours, as they stain), and the black. You can also use a deep navy, like OPI 'Russian Navy' or something equally as "nighttime sky-y".

Using the lightest of your colours, paint it onto a corner of your cosmetic sponge (like we did in the laser splotches tute), and dab it onto the nail in any streaky sort of pattern.
Make sure it's fairly wide, but not so wide that it covers the whole nail.
Cut the green corner off of the sponge.

Grab the light blue, and paint a small amount onto a clean corner of the sponge, and then dab it through the middle of the green.
This is how we begin to create the depth of the galaxy.
Cut off the blue corner of the sponge.

Using the purple, paint a very small amount on the sponge, and use it to blend and merge the edges of the brighter colours into the dark.

Do the same with the navy, but on a lesser scale. You don't want the navy to stand out, we use it here purely to blend the sharper edges of the lighter colours into the dark background.

Take the white polish and your toothpick/tiny dotting tool, and place some random small dots around the nail.
These make up some of the stars. You can place them wherever you like, just try not to go overboard.
I like to put a bit of size variation - mostly really small, with a couple larger. It adds a sense of distance.

Using the fine glitter polish, paint a light coat over the whole nail. This adds another element of starlight. Try not to get any of the larger glitters on the nail, and keep it just as the micro glitters.
A polish like China Glaze's Nova or Fairy Dust would be perfect here.

At this point, you can place some of the larger glitters on the nail for extra starriness.

Top coat your design to blend the colours together in a beautiful array of spacey goodness, and you're good to go!











Hope this has been useful!
Can't wait to see what you'll do with this!