Basic nail art techniques

Hi sweetnesses!

Today’s post is special and something I have never done before: It’s a review of a book. An eBook, to be specific.

I follow quite a big number of blogs and many of the blog owners make great nail art. Ina fra My Nail Polish Online is one of them, and also one I admire a lot for her skills. I said yes right away when she asked me if I wanted to write an honest review of her eBook about nail art techniques.

Here’s the front cover of the book.

The book starts out with basics: Basic nail care and how to paint your nails. It has a section about the nail art tools and an explanation to what accent nails are.  And then, when all the basics are covered, the nail art begins!

There are a lot of different sorts of nail art in the book, from animal print to chevrons, and from dots over lines to water decals and gradients. Every technique is described in a picture tutorial with a matching text.

When I started this review I knew I was going to try a couple of the tutorials out. And I wanted to pick a couple of techniques that I haven’t tried before.

I started out with the freehanded ruffian. Here are some shots from the book; First Ina’s final result, then the pictorial guide, and finally the description in words.

I used glittery polishes because that’s how I roll. It’s two El Corazón polishes: The violet is #423/32 and the green is #423/507 L.H. Nymph.

I followed Ina’s guide and this is my result:

That was actually easier than I thought it would be! I made an extra violet dot on the green because I wanted the colours to come together more.

The next one I tried was the chevron IKAT. Here’s Ina’s take on it and her tutorial:

I used a pink El Corazón for the base: #m&s 167. The purple is El Corazón is #m&s 162, and the other two colours are just black and white.

Here’s the result I got after following the tutorial:

It’s quite obvious here that my nails are both shorter and smaller than Ina’s, so my canvas isn’t as big. But I’m satisfied with the result anyway.

Verdict:

This is a really good nail art book. It shows the techniques step by step, both in words and in photos. It also comes up with colour suggestions and tips to more advanced techniques.

“Can’t I just find all that via Google?”, you may ask. It’s true, Google is a great place to get inspired. But the book offers both the nail art and shows you how you achieve the look yourself. That takes a bit of extra time to get Google to find the right pages for that. Besides: This is more a book about the techniques than a place to be inspired.

The book is 154 pages long and there’s only one thing I’m missing, and that’s an index. It would be even cooler to not having to go through the entire book to find that specific tutorial you’re looking for. 
EDIT: Ina made the table of contents happen the same day I posted this review, so now you don't have to go through it all to find that specific tutorial you're looking for. Score! ♥

Basically: It’s a really good book, both for beginners into nail art, and for those who have performed it for a little while. Polished thumbs up from me!

The eBook retails for US$ 7.49 and you can get your hands on it here.