Spring is here, flowers are on trend. In this blog post, I am going to show you, how to create easy flower designs, using pastel hard colour gels.
My base is a crispy French (pink and white) nail. If you are interested, how to do French with gel polish have a look on my previous blog post here. If you are an acrylic girl, check the reverse technique secrets here.
The first thing what I do is, with a fine nail art brush, like Top Liner or Russian Striper brush, I just simply paint on the outline of my flower. It is better to do 3, 5 or 7 petal flowers but if you run out of space, it is not the end of the world. I am using NABA hard colour gel Pastel Grey here. When the outlines are ready, put it into the UV or LED lamp for a couple of seconds. This is what I call flash cure.
Next step is, to fulfil the petals with gel. Cure.
My next flower is going to be on the top of the grey flower. This flower is smaller than the previous one. I can only do a 4-petal flower here. It starts with the outline of the flower, using NABA hard colour gel Balett Pink. Flash cure.
Fulfil the petals with the same colour and cure.
My third flower here reminds me to a daisy. The only difference is, the daisy is white but I used here NABA hard colour gel Sunshine. Use the body of your Top Liner brush to create the look in just one step. Cure.
Repeat the same daisy style flower on the other side of the grey flower. It does not need to be a full daisy. Cure.
I still have got some space on the nail so I will add another half pink flower in the left corner of the nail. Cure.
With your fine detail brush and some NABA hard colour gel Cappucino define the middle of each flowers. It does not need to be perfect at all. Just go with the flow. Cure.
Leaves. This is a mixture colour of 2 different greens. Benetton and Kiwi. The reason why is because one of the green is too dark green for this composition, the other green is too light. So I mixed them together to get the right green for me. You can do that as well. You can always mix colours together to get the best match. To paint the leaves on, I used #4 acrylic brush. Yes, you heard me right, acrylic brush I used with gel. It is absolutely fine and I do it often as well. The only thing you need to remember, if you used an acrylic brush with gel, that became a gel brush. You cannot use it for acrylics any more. To solve the problem, you have 2 #4 acrylic brushes. One for just acrylics use and the other one just for gel use. Make sure you mark them so you know which one is which.
Outlines. You will need a fine detail brush, black hard colour gel and steady hands for this. If you look at my lines, they are not all the same. Some of them are thicker, some of them are thinner. This is how it should be if you want to create realistic flowers. If your lines are all the same, it gives me a sticky, fake effect of the flowers. It does not look freehand painted anymore at all. The key is imperfection. 😉 When your outlines are read, cure.
I believe every design looks a bit better if you add some white to it. Not a lot, just brighten up the picture a bit. Using NABA hard colour gel 01, I just add some leaves and dots to the flowers. Cure.
If you like glitters, you can add a hint of glitter to the flowers. Don’t cover the flowers with glitters, really just a hint, nothing else. Your handpainted florist’s bouquet is ready.
