Watermelon Nails

Now… I’m not a big fan of “nail art” exactly (the *imo* tacky, all-over, unattainable designs you sometimes see on long, talon-like nails) but I do like cute nails, and themed nails. BUT I can’t afford to go to the salon every week, so I need to do it myself. I was mourning the loss of summer a couple of weeks back, so I decided to up my spirits with a summery watermelon themed manicure. 🙂

Watermelon Nails

For this look you will need:

• Ulta base coat (or your favorite base coat)
• OPI “Feelin Hot-Hot-Hot” nail polish (or another pink watermelon colored polish)
• Scotch tape or french manicure guards
• Orly “Halleys Comet” nail polish (or another green rind color)
• Black nail art pen (I use Migi brand) or black nail polish and a toothpick
• OPI clear top coat (or any kind of plain top coat) [optional]
• Sally Hansen “Mega Shine Top Coat” (seriously, don’t even try anything else, this stuff is the best!!!)

How to get this look:

1. Paint your nails with the base coat. Let dry ~5 minutes, just till it’s dry to the touch.
2. Paint your nails with the pink polish. Let dry for ~2 minutes then do a second coat with the pink. Don’t worry about wrapping the tips, because the tips will end up being green, just try to get a nice even coat from cuticle to the top of your nail.
3. Now you have two options, either give your nails about an hour to dry thoroughly, or coat them with one coat of the SH Mega Shine and give them about 30 minutes (this will dry to the touch in 60 seconds, but you’re going to be applying sticky tape to this polish, so you need it to be DRYYYY!). You might try a rapid dry topcoat, but Mega Shine is super fast and is by FAR my favorite (see why by clicking here).
4. Once your pink nails are dry, you’re going to need your tape or your french manicure guards  (manicure guards are those white stickers you put on the tips of your nails to get the nice straight line of white at the tops of your nails for your french mani).  I just use tape because a) it’s cheap and b) who doesn’t have some Scotch tape lying around?? I’d even use masking tape, or those address stickers charities always send to entice you to donate… I mean really, let’s not act like this is so sophisticated, anything will do, even just a super steady hand (which I don’t really have)!
5. Rip off small pieces of tape and touch them to your skin, then remove from skin (this helps moderate the stickiness of the tape to avoid messing up the pink polish) and place on nails about 1/4 inch from the tip, leaving the tip exposed and the tape covering your pink nail. Only do one hand at a time and make sure your front edge is stuck down well.
6. After you have the first hand taped up, paint the exposed nail tips (don’t forget to wrap those tips!! It makes ALL the difference) green and after you do 2-3 nails if you’re fast or after each nail if you’re slow, remove the tape from the painted nails.  If you wait too long the polish will dry to the tape and you won’t get a nice clean line from green to pink.  Paint all nail tips green.
7. Repeat steps 5 & 6 for your other hand, and allow polish to dry for about 15 minutes to avoid smudging.
8. After the green is fairly dry, use your nail pen, or black polish and a toothpick, to make small dots in the pink, but as you lift your pen or toothpick up, drag it slightly toward the tip of your nail to create the slightest teardrop shape for the seeds.  Add as many or as few seeds as you like (I started off with ~5 per nail then had to add more) and then let dry for a while, maybe 15 minutes.
9. If you use my favorite top coat, SH Mega Shine, you might want to do a quick coating with a basic top coat like OPI clear top coat but if you wait till the seeds are completely dry you don’t need to worry. The SH Mega Shine is specially formulated to basically melt all your layers of polish together to make a super chip resistant solid top coat, and sometimes it can cause different colors of nail polish to streak into one another, so to be safe sometimes I do a quick coat of regular top coat, then do my Mega Shine coat.  Anyway, lay on some top coat (wrap those tips!!!) and voila! watermelon nails your friends will be jealous of! 🙂

Let me know how yours turned out, or how you do your watermelon nails if you’ve done it before! Thanks for reading!