Green Splatter Paint Nails

Arden: Hey everyone!  One of my favorite manicures I've had so far is definitely the multicolor splatter paint nails I did a couple months ago.  I was yearning to do something fun (and a little messy), so I decided to try out a monochrome splatter paint design.  I think I might own more green nail polishes than any other color (what a random choice, right?) so I decided to go for green!

I started by painting my nails with two coats of Essie Absolutely Shore.  Then I started splattering on colors!  You can see my earlier tutorial to get a feel for how I did it.  (Though I recently saw online a different method that might be less messy, so I will probably be trying out an alternative way to do splatter paint nails soon!).  The first color I added was Zoya Wednesday.  I dipped a small straw in the bottle, and then blew through the straw to splatter the paint on my nails.

Next up was Julep Korin!

Third was Essie Mint Candy Apple.

I repeated the process (without taking pictures, apparently) with both Sinful Colors Rise and Shine and Essie Navigate Her (this one was a mistake-- it looked too yellow/tan [aka: like puke] compared to the rest of the greens, and I ended up using a couple of the colors again to cover most of it up).  My nails with all the colors on looked like this:

Can we take a minute to recognize how messy this process is?  I had nail polish allllll over my fingers, which then meant it ended up on my face, on my camera, and even on the light switch in my bathroom.  Sooooo messy, but so fun!

Here's the final product once I added a coat of Essie Good to Go and cleaned up my fingers using acetone:

I had the problem again with some small bubbles showing up because the splatter technique dropped huge globs of polish on my fingers.  I'm not sure how to avoid this-- has anyone tried it and know a good technique?  I don't think the bubbles necessarily look bad, but I would like to create some splatter paint nails without them once.

What do you think? Do you like the splatter paint look?  What colors should I try splatter painting next?  Let me know in the comments!

Splatter Paint Nails Tutorial

Arden here!  Did anybody else's family do a lot of splatter painting when they were younger?  Maybe it was just me, but I definitely had several articles of clothing that featured some home-made splatter paint when I was in elementary school.  Today's manicure brought back all that 90's awesomeness!

I had been looking to do some really colorful nails, and my original plan was to try a rainbow pattern.  But the more I thought about it, the more tedious, time-consuming, and un-fun painting on a gazillion rainbow stripes sounded.  So I decided to go in another, infinitely more fun direction.  And I'm so glad I did, because this is by far my favorite manicure I've given myself yet!

I started by painting my nails with two coats of Sally Hansen Black Out.

I then started splatter painting!  All you really need to do this technique is a straw.  I did not have a full-sized drinking straw, so I used a little red coffee stirrer straw.  I do think that no matter the diameter of your straw, it probably helps to cut them down so they're shorter.  I ended up cutting each coffee stirrer in thirds.

Next, make a little puddle of the nail polish you want to splatter on a paper plate/wax paper/Ziploc baggie/whatever water-resistant surface you want.  Dip one end of the straw in the nail polish.  Then hold it over your nail, and blow into the other end of the straw.  (Be careful not to inhale the polish!)

It will probably take you a couple of tries to work out all of the kinks.  Here I am practicing on wax paper.  As you can tell, the nail polish didn't so much splatter out of the straw as drip down.  (But that one in the lower left corner looks good!)

I found that blowing a quick sharp breath helped.  Also, it worked better for me when I made a tah sound as I blew, instead of a wah.

Here are my nails after I finished my first color.  They weren't too impressive.

Yeah, that's right, the pinky and pointer finger basically only have small drops on them.