I had a terrific response to these flame-licked nails I posted the other day – really, so many sweet compliments. And seeing as they were ultra easy in addition to popular, I thought I’d share the love AND my technique for how to achieve these fiery nails, this time with a Halloween-leaning bent. I suppose this glittery green fire could be Maleficent’s evil-conjuring fire, but really, one green, bad fairy spell is just like the other, is it not? Let’s get into this!
1. To begin, brush on two coats of a dark, opaque polish. For the more traditional fire nails I did the other day, I used a deep, blood red as the background polish. For these more supernaturally-minded nails, I used OPI’s Do You Have This Color in Stock-holm?, a dark, royal purple.
2.-4. Working quickly and going one nail at a time, brush on a thick coat of your base polish. Then, taking the three polishes you’re going to blend together for the fire effect (the other day it was orange, yellow and a glittery red, whereas here it’s Finger Paints’ neon green Silkscreen Green, Smitten Polish’s glittery green Not Your Mama’s Easter Grass and a basic white creme) dab one atop the other, starting with the neon green, then the white, and finally the glittery green, right at the tips of your nails.
5. While all of the above is still wet, take the fine point of a dotting tool and lightly drag it through the polish from the tips of your nails up towards your cuticles, “licking” out the flames as you go. The beauty of a fire-type design is that there’s really no wrong way to do it – fires are abstract and diffuse by design, so even if you fudge up a little bit, who’s going to know? 🙂
6.-8. Continuing to work one nail at a time, repeat with your remaining nails. I varied up the design a bit on my middle and ring fingers, swirling the flames up towards the centre of my hand, but you can make your flames bend and dance however you wish.
Not shown: Topcoat application and clean-up, but you already do that always, right? Right! 😉 Then in the final analysis you’re left with something like this. Flame on!
Finger Candy 
I will have to try this, I also bought OPI Stock-holm at Ulta yesterday, since OPIs were buy two get one free..(yeah I bought a lot of polish, it was my maiden voyage to the new location that opened near my house….). I’ve got some great green holos, surely that would work… I am not a big Disney fan, but always did like Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent, maybe it was the purple and green thing…
Ooh, I’d love to even go to an Ulta sometime – we no have them in Canada, I don’t think. Green holos would totally work with this – besides, I always add a touch of sparkle or glitter because, you know, sparkle. Or glitter.
…”Because you know, sparkle. Or glitter.”
Yes! I *DO* know!! 😀
Wait WHAT? How did you…? Oh ok. Tutorial. I think I’ll HAVE to try this. I’m not usually into trying new techniques, but this evil fire looks AWESOME.
Thank you! And I’d love to see how it turns out, if you try it out and would like to share. 🙂 Your polish needs to be wet, though. I tried a similar technique yesterday after I had swatched a polish with topcoat. The topcoat seemed to harden things up too much and I couldn’t drag a good design through the polish.