Roar- Leopard Print and Gradient Design

Hello everyone! Today we will be creating a kind of simple design, leopard print and a gradient. Their really was no reason that I wanted to make this design, other then just for fun (really that's every design) and I was just kind of thinking of a design that future clients of mine might ask for, I know that not everyone would like my cartoon style of nail art, so I decided to create something simple that maybe everyone of any age would like. 

 

    Roar! Leopard Print and Gradient design 

Here are the polishes and tools used in this leopard and gradient design:

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

Nail polishes- Finger paints- Tiffany imposter, Sally Hansen- xtreme wear-Celeb city, OPI- Hello Kitty- My Pal Joey, and Sally Hansen- Hard as Nails- Black Heart.

Optional polishes- these polishes I used on my right had with no gradient. Picture Polish- Salt Water- Nailstorming, and Pretty& Polished- Sea Spray.

Nail art tools- Large dotting tool and a fan brush.

Other- A glass jar with nail polish remover in it to clean of your brushes, a sandwich bag for the gradient to help to blend your polishes, for easier clean up you can put tape around your fingers, or a liquid latex if you have any.    

* This time I didn't use any acrylic paint, just nail polish! (Wow!)

Let's stat this leopard print design, Roar!

 

I decided to put this back into the post,even though I am still not doing the step by step with pictures, but just explaining each step. 

Start off with a thin layer of base coat to protect your nails and to help your polish to last. I used my fave base coat CND Stickey Base.

 

Leopard and gradient design

After your base coat has dried apply a light sky blue to your index, middle, and pinky nail. For this you really only need 1 coat because of the gradient we will be making, but I ended up putting two coats. Then on the thumb and ring finger nail apply a silver polish.

On the nails that we will be doing a gradient, it is best that you put a top coat on first. I learn the hard way on this because if you don't apply a top coat first and let that dry, and you go to do the gradient it will not blend well at all and just smudge. 

Leopard Print Design:

As we let the nails that we just top coated dry, we will create the leopard print on the thumb and pinky nail. Take a large dotting tool with some blue polish on it and make random dots all over the nail, (they don't need to be perfect) also make sure to leave some silver showing. 

Once your blue spots have dried, take the smaller end of your dotting tool with black polish on it and around the blue dots make kind of a C shape around the blue dots. Some of the blue dots you can make two C shapes or one it is up to you. Then in the blank areas, add a few more small black spots. Also make sure to still have some of the silver showing.

The nice part about this design is their is no set way of do this design, their are just a lot of random dots made to look like leopard print, and no leopard has the same print, so each nail can look different.

          Leopard and gradient design close up

Light and Dark Blue Gradient:

* If you want to make the clean up around your finger a little easier, you can use tape and tape around your finger or if you have a liquid latex you can use that as well. I used tape because I don't have any liquid latex. 

 

Now your light blue polish that you top coated has dried. We will be doing a gradient a little bit different this time. Usually we create a gradient with a makeup sponge, but today we will be using a fan brush. 

For me using the fan brush help to blend the colors together much better. When I practice this they blended together perfectly, but then when I went to do this on my nails not so much, I probably should have blended the polishes a little more, by brushing over the nails a few more time with the fan brush, but it still tuned out.  

First you will need to take a sandwich bag and paint a generous amount of the darker blue on one side, and then on the other side paint a generous amount of the same light blue that you polishes all over your nails (it is okay if the colors start to over lap a little.) 

Then take your fan brush and glide over the two colors, you can wipe the brush on the sandwich bag to start to per-blend the colors and to make sure you don't have to much polish on the brush.           

Then with the darker blue near the tip, start to brush the fan brush back and fourth to create a gradient effect.   

Leopard print on other hand

Want to create an even simpler design? On my right hand I just create the leopard print on the thumb and ring finer nail and the index, middle, and pink finer nail I painted a solid color. 

On the index and pinky nail I used Pretty & Polished- Sea Spray and on the middle finger nail I used on of my new polishes (that I will be reviewing, along with some other polishes very soon) Picture Polish's Salt Water.      

Once your leopard and gradient or just leopard and a solid color, or even all leopard print design has dried apply a top coat to seal in your design, as always I used Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat. 

With any design you can use whatever color you would like, you could use a tan and a brown for a more realistic look, pink, green, orange, whatever color you would like.

Feeling a little more wild? Last year I create a Tiger print design as well, that you can create or even add to this design. Here is the link if you would like to check out this design as well.
Blue Tiger- Tiger print design    

Hope all of you enjoyed this leopard print design!

See you next time for more nail fun!