Paradise Found- Tropical Design

Hello everyone! Sorry that it has been a few weeks since I have done done a design for all of you! If you read my last little post that I did, Yay I did it! You would know that I just finished with nail tech school and now I just have to take the state boards to become an official/ licensed nail technician. 
Anyways for today we have a bright, tropical design that we will be creating, you all know how I love tropical designs and with it being summer time this will be a great design to create.

     
For this design I got inspiration from this bag (in the photo above), this bag was part of the Bath & Body Works Hawaii collection from 2015, this bag had travel size items from the Oahu Coconut Sunset fragrance. I also recently purchased the 2016 Essie Summer collection and thought this design would go great with the colors in this collection.

Here are the polishes and nail art tools used for this tropical design:

   

Base and top coat - CND Stickey Base Coat and Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat.

Nail polishes- Essie 2016 collection; Viva Antigua!, Coconut Cove, Berried Treasures, and Loot the Booty. China glaze- white on white, OPI Hawaii- Is Mai Tai Croooked, and  Sally Hansen- Triple Shine- Play Koi. 

Acrylic paint- white, black, blue, green, and yellow.

Nail art tools- thin detail and liner brush, and a make up sponge. 

Other- small jar with water in it, to clean off the nail art brushes and tape or liquid latex to help make the clean up easier. 

Remember to always start off by applying a base coat to all of your nails, then you apply your polish.

For this design we will need to first paint all of our nail white (I suggest two coats of white, I used one coat and it was kind of streaky) this helps to make your bright colors pop. Then once that is dry, apply a top coat that way when we sponge on the colors the white will not come up.     

This design will get kind of messy, so we will need to put tape on the side of our fingers and near the cuticle or you can use liquid latex for an easier clean up.  

 

Tropical design on the thumb nail

We will start off with the tropical design on the thumb nail. To start off this design first we will do the sponge gradient, you will need to do the same thing on your ring finger. I did the gradient in two part first with the sky colors and then the water. 

Take a damp makeup sponge, and paint on a bright pink, a bright orange, and a light orange. ( Berried Treasures, Play Koi and Is Mai Tai Croooked) Then sponge that color on, you may need to do this two more times to be opaque.

Then cut that part of the sponge off, then we will do the water part. Once again make sure your sponge is still damp and paint the sponge a dark blue and a turquoise. (Loot the Booty and Viva Antigua!) Then sponge those two colors on right under the light orange, once again you may need to re- due this a few times.

Repeat this same step on your ring finger.

Now for the smaller details, we will first start off with the palm tree. With black acrylic paint paint the steam of the tree, then make the outline of the tree branches, and once you have the outline the way you like start to make small lines on each branch for the leaves. 

After that we will go on the the land that is near the tip of the nail. With blue paint kind of dab your brush to form a bush, then do the same for light green on top of the blue, and dark green on top of the light green.

Next is the sun, first make a white outline for the sun and once that is dry fill that in with yellow paint.

The last step is to make small detail in the water, to kind of make it look like waves. The way my sponging ended up it looks like a really big wave is coming. For this step it was best for me to just make a lot of random lines that looked like the bag (in the photo at the start of the blog.) 

 

 Tropical design on the ring finger nail.

For the ring finger as you can see it is very similar to the thumb nail. The only thing different that you have to do is just make half the palm tree, no sun, and make the small line for the waves a little bit different.

   Blue and turquoise gradient 

The next step is much easier then the other nails, we will just be doing a two color sponge gradient. I have only tried the sponge gradient a few time, this time it turned out a little bit better, I still need to work on it though to try and get them to blend together better. 

This will be done on the index, middle and pinky finger nails. For the sponge gradient take a clean damp makeup sponge, paint a blue and turquoise (Loot the Booty and Viva Antigua!) right next to each other, they can overlap. Then sponge the colors on to the nail, make sure to kind of move the sponge from side to side to try and blend the colors together.

You may need to do this a few more time to make the colors opaque enough. 

       Final design, Paradise Found

Once your bright tropical design has dried apply a top coat to protect your nails and to seal in your design.  

  

 

 

 Once again here are my practice versions of today's designs. 

 

                Right hand Essie's Berried Treasures on thumb, index, middle, and pinky nail 

and Coconut Cove on ring finger nail.

On my other hand I want to incorporate the other colors as well, so I just paint them with the solid colors of Coconut Cove and Berried Treasures. I used two coats for both colors, Coconut Cove was still a little bit streaky so I put a light third layer on. As for Berried Treasures I thought was okay with two coats, but later on it looked like it could have used a third because it was still kind of streaky.

  

 

 Essie 2016 collection; Viva Antigua!, Coconut Cove, Berried Treasures, and Loot the Booty.

 

The Essie Summer 2016 collection has six colors in the collection. With a mini box set (which I purchased) with four of the colors from the collection. The minis are a good size for a mini and the brushes seem easy to work with. 

Loot the Booty is a dark blue with blue shimmer in it.

Berried Treasures is a bright strawberry (at least that what I think of when I see this color) or berry pink creme polish. 

Coconut Cove is an off white creme polish.

Viva Antigua is a turquoise with gold or light green shimmer in it.

The other two I do not have.

Hiking Heels is a bright lava red.

Tribal Text- Styles is a black with sliver shimmer in it.

I only wore Berried Treasure and Coconut Cove as a solid color on my right hand and Viva Antigua and Loot the Booty I sponged on for a gradient, so it was hard to tell how they really applied. As stated above the two polish I did fully wear where kind of streaky, but they were still very pretty.  Viva Antigua and Loot the Booty where the two colors that stood out for me in this collection because of the shimmer in them. I do plain on wear them for a full manicure, so I can see how they wear on the nails. 

This is the second time I have bought any Essie polishes, the first time I was not impressed I bought Starry Starry Night the Retro Revival and it didn't have a good formal. This time the polishes where much better, I really liked them and think they are great colors for summer or going on a tropical vacation or cruise.

Hope all of you enjoyed this tropical nail design, I really like how this design turned out and I am glad I could share it with all of you! Also hope all of you enjoyed the review of the Essie Summer 2016 collection as well!

For the next few weeks I am going to be studying for the state board to be a licensed nail technician, I do still plain on doing a post on Friday, but if I don't all of you will know why.

See you next time for more nail fun!