Butterfly Wings

After seeing a few beautiful gradient butterfly wing manis, I just couldn't wait to give it a try. Whilst the manis I had seen had been stamped unfortunately the plates I purchased to recreate the look were way too hard to work with, so hand painting was the only way. Cue my trusty sidekick Jules who is always willing to donate her nails to experimentation.

If you would like to recreate this look here are a few pictures to help you out. Its really not too hard, you just need a super thin brush and a steady hand.

Step 1 - Apply white polish to all your nails. Arrrrh un-moisturised granny finger!

Step 2 - Choose your feature colours. The colours I used from left to right, Creative Fantasy which is much more purple IRL, Towel Boy and Pool Party.

Step 3 - Use a sponge to apply your first colour to a section of your nail.

Step 4 - Apply your 2nd colour to the next section of your nail, its OK if you go over the 1st colour, its preferable actually because it helps it all to blend together. You can see the blue has created a purple line where it met the pink.

Step 5- Add your 3rd colour, again going over the 2nd colour a little and sponging all the way to the tip of your nail. If you have long nails use more colours or make your sections wider. A tip when sponging, dip the sponge into the paint then dab a few times on the paper to remove excess paint so that you can gradually build up colour and keep that sponged look rather then a solid colour. Use a cotton bud and small paintbrush to clean off the paint that is on your skin and cuticles.

Step 6- Apply multi coloured micro glitter. My go to micro glitter is Out The Door - Northern Lights. Its freaking gorgeous and is also a fast drying top coat like Seche Vite so you can use it over all your manis for that extra sparkle without creating yet another layer that needs to dry. Its a genius product and a must have for every nail polish addict. Gloss'n' Sparkle Spectraflair topcoat is a great alternative. Another polish you could use instead would be China Glaze - Fairy Dust but you will need to wait for it to dry before moving on to the next step.

Step 7 - Use a super small detail brush and black polish. This is the brush I used. The first stroke is an arch shape.

Step 8 - Add a large petal shape. 

Step 9 - Add another petal shape to the side of the first one making sure its smaller in size than the first one. If your nail is wide add another petal shape.

Step 10 - Use a dotting tool to add tiny white dots around the tip of your nail and down one side. 

Wait a good 5 minutes before applying your top coat so that you don't smudge the black lines or white dots. If you are after the pink, blue or purple polishes we have them all in stock, come see us at the markets. Hope you enjoyed this post and give the design a try. We would love to see :)