Cheetah Nail Tutorial

In my opinion, cheetah nails are a classic manicure and that is why I am ecstatic to be posting a tutorial on them today. This is also the first time that I have created cheetah nails on a gradient background so I am even more excited about my nails than usual. Let's get this started!

All that you need are:

• 2 different nail polishes (any color combo you desire) & black nail polish
• A dotting tool or 2 -- Thin and thick ones work well (don't know what to use? Check this out!)
• Scratch paper

1. Paint your nails your base color -- This color will be the background of your cheetah nails and we will just say that mine is blue. ;) Allow this to dry completely before moving on!

2. Next, the 2nd color will be the color of your spots. I decided on a silver because it looked chic with the blue. When you have decided on the color, drop a bit onto your scratch paper. Okay, we will start the spots now. Don't be afraid, they DO NOT need to be perfect (like most things in nail art). In fact, they look better if they're varied blobs. :) So with your thick dotting tool, dip it into your nail polish on the paper and draw some funkish looking dot shapes. Seriously, these things can be virtually any shape or size. I only create a few because you can ALWAYS go back and add more. It's like what your parents always tell you food wise; it's better to take and then go back and get more than to be wasteful. :(

3. You're probably looking at your nails right now and thinking "What is Jenna doing?! Destroying my nails with ugly, random blops???" Don't stop! Let's continue and hopefully you'll begin to like the results. :) Now, with some black nail polish, drop some onto the scratch paper. Time to form the spots -- take your thin dotting tool and dip it into the black, and around your newly created spots, draw little "u's". Or another way to think about it is to outline them in black, but leave an opening or two. Once again, you can just see what you like best. Make them irregular and not perfect!

4. As you can see, the nail is incomplete and honestly, just ugly. And this is what I mean by just add more later. I added another full spot and then in the blank spaces, I drew more little "u" shaped items that weren't connected to anything and just plain black dots here and there. And there you have it! A hopefully awesome cheetah mani!

And this is how my cheetah process worked:





 

Hopefully you can see why it's important to leave some space until the end and then fill in. Oh! And don't look at my thumb in the 3rd picture. ;) I'm still learning how to take these pictures for blogging!

Final Product

Extra!

Here is another visual I created for the
process of cheetah making spots.

The tools I used :)

From here on out, if you try one of my tutorials and would like me to see how your nails turned out, feel free to email me a picture or post to instagram and tag @polishpals because I'd love to see! Or if you ever have any more questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on cheetah nails. :) Your Pal, Jenna

 

(NOTE: Ah! Boy, my first tutorial... It's so weird looking back now at my color choice and picture quality. ;) Thanks for looking though! I'll be sure to update my old posts with newer nails! Check out my Classical Cheetah Nails to see another small pictorial of cheetah nail art. Let me know if you still have any questions! Cheetah nails are super chic and easy to do really. :) I hope this helps you out! <3 Jenna - Updated 12/23/12).