For most of my life, I never ever wore any nail polish on my finger nails…

 I would never go without polish on my toenails – but I wasn’t really keen on the traditional red or pink fingernails…

 So how did I become a Nail Art Fanatic you ask?!?! Well here is my story 😉

A little over 2 years ago, I started going to salsa classes. And every Saturday, we would have a themed salsa party.

So we would all dress up, and being a makeup artist, I always looked for ways to do my make-up according to the theme.

This later spilled over to painting my toenails according to the theme colours.

And then that one life changing Saturday, I was hit by this bolt of creativity… The theme for our salsa party was New York – Yellow Taxi Cab. And I could just picture these bright yellow nails with that distinctive black and white check patterned line – typical of a yellow cab.0

But my poor little toenails would just be too tiny to properly showcase this idea in my head.

And so – on my fingernails – my first ever Nail Art creation was born!! :

I had no idea what I was doing, and I did not yet have any of the nail art brushes or tools that I now have… so it was a case of ‘use what you have lying around’ or as we say in Afrikaans : “boer maak ‘n plan” LOL

The bright yellow polish was not a problem – that I received in a goodie bag full of bright nail polishes as a Christmas present.

But how to do the black and white check pattern neatly?!

This is when I had another bright spark… I took the white nail tip guides, that you use to neatly paint your tips when you do a french mani, and I drew black vertical lines directly on the sheet of guides. So that when I took each one of the guides off, it already had black and white blocks on it!

Then it was just a matter of positioning 2 of them on each of my nail tips, so that the white block of the one connects with the black of the other, and Vice Versa.

Finished by a couple of layers of clear top coat to keep it all together…

And Voila! Yellow taxi cab nails 😀

Now over the course of the next couple of months, I will be showing you (step-by-step) how to easily do the most popular nail art techniques out there! As well as share my tips & tricks on using some ordinary things that you already have in your cupboard or lying around the house, to create your Nail Art.

I would also love to see your own creations!

So go and create a photo album on your profile here on Beauty Bulletin, name it something like ‘My Nail Art’, upload a photo of your first ever Nail Art creation, and then share the link as a comment on this article!!

Article By Mariaan Enslin