Summer Nails: Tie Dye

We have a nineteen year old girl living with us as she works and goes to school. A few days ago, she came to me and asked if she could use some of my nail polish to do her nails. I brought out the two, large plastic shoe boxes full of polish and she began going thru them to find the perfect color (or so I thought). Hours later, she showed me her handy work (haha!!), which resulted in her nails covered in wild designs in bright colors. At this point, I was fascinated and insisted that she show me how to do a more “age appropriate” (cough) color scheme for me.

I picked out four pastel (ish) colors that I thought would potentially be conservative enough for an old lady but fun enough for me to express my inner fifteen year old. I chose Essie’s Naughty Nautical, Boom Boom and Tart Deco and CoverGirl’s Pina Colada. The next step was to get a bowl of water, some paper towels, cellophane tape, and toothpicks. Once you’ve done that, take pieces of the tape and tape the skin around each nail. Do this BEFORE you go any further (on any nail that you want to tie dye).

Now the fun starts! The first thing to do is to drop the polish, one drop at a time, into the bowl of water. Some of the polish will immediately dissipate and form a film on the surface of the water (you can kind of see it in the picture above). Then you please more drops of the different colors, one on top of the other, until you get enough spreading out in rings. In the picture above, I first dropped a pink color, which immediately dissipated and then dropped another pink, an orange and then a yellow. Eventually it will look like this:

Once it looks like this, take a toothpick and “draw” lines from the outside of the circles to the middle, forming swirly designs. Don’t wait too long or the “film” will harden too much and make it difficult to work.

Once you’re satisfied with the design, dip your nail into the polish, making sure to get it in a section that has a good mix of colors. Then take you nail out and remove the tape. Take the toothpick and “pick up” the polish in the water. Immediately take the tape off the nail you just dipped. If you are doing more nails, repeat the entire process until you are finished.

Despite covering your skin with the tape, you’ll still have some polish around the edges. The best way to clean this up is with a small brush dipped into nail polish remover. Once you’ve cleaned up the edges, paint a coat of top coat (I use Seche Vite) and you’re set!

My nails are pretty low key compared to a lot of them that I’ve seen but I love them! They’re fun!! Now, I’m not about to wear them on a sales call, but I sure will have fun rocking them when I’m not traveling for business this summer!