Recently I seem to have developed an uncontrollable love for all things mermaid!
Mermaid hair, mermaid nails ..literally everything!
I had seen some really pretty mermaid nails on Instagram and decided to have a go myself.
I chose to use stencils from a company called Nail Mail rather than try and paint on the scales myself with a metallic gold base coat and different shades of purples (including some glitter of course.
I painted my nails with one coat of the metallic gold (Barry M) the painted a clear coat over the top then left to dry for 15 minutes - this step is essential to stop the stencil pulling off the base coat later on.
I then applied the stencil to all nails on one hand (it helps if you have quite narrow nails to cute the stencil in half that way you have less waste meaning you have stencil left over for next time!) I decided to leave a feature nail plain gold.
I used 4 different purple shades over the stencils - Barry M purple glitter, China glaze in a dark pink shade and lilac shade and OPI in Significant Other Colour. I used a small sponge and tweezers to dab on each colour to give a slight mottled effect rather than just using on solid colour.
I found it is better to do one nail at a time then peel the stencil off straight away while the paint it is still wet to avoid the paint drying and the stencil pulling off some of the paint potentially ruining the effect.
Finish with a nice shiny clear top coat and voila ..perfect mermaid nails!
You can use literally any combination of colours to create this effect, the possibilities really are endless!
Stencils - £3.95 from Nail Mail
Midi rings - £3 for set of 3 Primark
