Totally Tropical Nail Art

I've got to admit, I'm pretty proud of my most recent foray into the world on nail art, my tropical leopard print design, you can see above. Previous attempts have included studs, flowers and transfers, lettering, clouds and leopard print. And to be honest, anything freehand, was a bit, a lot, on the messy side.

After drooling over amazing and creative nail art designs from the likes of WAH! and several sexy varnish blogs I decided to re-kindle my love for nail art. I've seen quite a few gradient nail varnish images recently, and was eager to give this a go. I also decided to invest in some Seche Vite, widely regarded as the best top coat in the world (am I exaggerating? I don't think so).

So if you like the above effect here is how I did it....

1. Base coat: Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat. After filing, cuticle tidying and cleaning, I applied this base coat. It seems to do the job well and after a few uses it still applies evenly and smoothly.
2. Main colour: Models Own Hedkani in Hedonist x 2 coats. I could probably have gotten away with one coat of this colour as it is highly pigmented, but I ended up doing a couple to make the edges as neat as possible.
3. Gradient colour: Models Own in Golden Peach. For the gradient I tried a couple of techniques but ended up painting a stripe of this Golden Peach colour along the tip of the nail, then, once it was dry I added some of the same colour to the corner of a sponge and lightly dabbed to blend the middle section of the nail.
4. Nail art: Models Own WAH Nail Art Pen in Black. I carefully, and rather slowly, used my nail art pen to draw on the leopard print design to all but my ring finger on both hands. Using the nail art pen again I drew the palm trees freehand.
5. Top coat: Seche Vite. Once the whole design was dry I added the top coat and sat very still while it dried...

(You may notice I also reversed the colour gradient on the ring finger, to make the palm tree stand out!)

My manicure lasted for five days before I got any chips, which I think, considering the number of coats of varnished used, is pretty good!

Although I spent quite a long time doing this, (to be fair I was multitasking, I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time and Johnny Depp is quite the distraction), I think it is the neatest and most professional looking nail art I have done to date. It has also inspired me to try some more designs - has anyone got any recommendations of other styles I can try?

What do you think of my nail art? What is your favourite design to paint on your nails - I'd love to know?