Mani Monday: Coral & Mint Leopard Mani

G’day folks! Thanks for joining me for yet another installment of Mani Monday, love having you lovely beings here :) Thought I would tackle the trending leopard print design that’s hot at the moment, and to to be fair I ADORE anything animal print :)

My twist on the trend was that I didn’t want to do a full on leopard design on all my nails, so I decided to do an accent nail in a contrasting colour with a full nail of leopard and leopard french tips on the other nails. I love the outcome, you can see I was slightly excited and donned the top coat a touch earlier than I should have, hence the black leopard dots ran a little (it's very slight though...but I can see it, forever the perfectionist damn!). Nevertheless a great mani and you can learn from me…wait a sufficient amount of time for the leopard spots to dry!

I used x1 coat Sally Hansen Instant Strength, x2 coats of Rimmel in Coralicious, x2 coats of Colours Nail Enamel in Creammoss, x1 coat of Essence Black is Black and x1 coat Essence in Stamp me! Silver for the leopard design with a final coat of Essence Studio Nails Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer as a top coat. This is such an easy look to achieve and you will be rocking some animal print nails in no time at all! Please do yourself a favour and go do this, ASAP :)

You will need:

• Base coat nail polish
• Two alternating base colour nail polishes (I used coral and mint)
• Two alternating leopard print design colours (I used black and silver)
• Top coat nail polish
• Orangewood stick
• Toothpick

Method:

1) Apply base coat nail polish to all nails, wait for it to dry completely

2) Apply x2 coats of alternating base colour nail polishes, I applied the mint coloured nail polish to both ring fingers as the accent nails and the coral coloured nail polish to the rest of my nails, wait for it to dry completely

3) I would suggest you practice the leopard design on a piece of paper first just so that you are familiar with the technique before trying it on your nails, it’s pretty simple so you have nothing to worry about!

4) Pour a small bit of silver nail polish on a piece of paper, using the orangewood stick dip the sharp end into the silver pool of nail polish and then carefully apply a small dot or squiggle on the piece of paper…it doesn’t have to be a perfect shape (a ‘lil squiggle is more in keeping with the leopard design)

5) Now pour a small pool of black nail polish on the same piece of paper, and carefully dip the end of the toothpick into the black pool of nail polish. Carefully trace around the silver squiggle, just do 2 small traces only tracing about half the squiggle on either side. So you will be leaving a fair bit of the silver squiggle without any outlining (this is best as it looks better as a leopard design this way). You basically just want to outline the two opposite ends of the squiggle/dot

6) Once you are confident with your skills, you can start applying it to your nails, repeat step 4-5

7) For the french tips, simply apply all the silver dots/squiggles to the 4 coral nails in a straight-ish line on the tip of the nails. Once that is completed, you can go about outlining the opposite ends of the dots/squiggles

8) For the accent nails, place a whole bunch of silver dots/squiggles everywhere on the nail and then repeat step 5 and outline the opposite ends of the dots/squiggles

9) Ensure that all nails have the leopard designs on them (step 4-5)

10) Wait for leopard designs to dry completely

11) Apply top coat and totes be chuffed with your amazing animal print mani!

12) You know this mani had me rocking out to some classic 80s rock, Def Leppard! I couldn’t help but think of them, yes put on some old school rock jams on your iPod and sing along to Def Leppard Rock of Ages, “Gunter glieben glauchen globen, All right…I got something to say…What do you want? What do you want? I want rock 'n 'roll, Allright!, Long live rock 'n 'roll”…la..la…la!

In other news, I finally got around to watching The Hunger Games to say I was not impressed is an understatement. After all the hype and rave reviews, I was entirely underwhelmed and to be frank…I found the basic premise of the whole THG plot to be rather barbaric. I know I might be stoned for even saying that since THG has such a following…but please if you’re a lover of THG, I would really like to know why ?! What am I missing about it ?! 

Has anyone seen ‘Rock of Ages’, is it any good ? (I had to ask since my mani reminded me of the rock classic…the namesake of this recent movie!)

As always, linking up to Mani Monday below, with the fabulous Heather and Heather!  I will also be joining the ladies over at The Nail Files.

Join the fun side of life and link up to Mani Monday and The Nail Files below :)