Money Smart Nail Art: The Toothbrush Method Tutorial

Here's the tutorial for the hodge splodge nail art I posted earlier in the week. It had a great response and 5 of you guessed my tool correctly - it was a toothbrush! Angie D, TheNailNut, Caitlin, TheBeauBow and Lisa all got it right... give yourselves a high five from me!

This is my entry to Money Supermarket's Money Smart Nail Art competition. I don't make any secret of the fact that I am a stingy SOB and I like to think myself a thrifty, bargain sniffing miss. For this criteria, I really wanted to create a tutorial for a nail art look that only used nail polish and tools that you would already have around the house, or that cost literally pennies to buy. It really doesn't get much more money smart than an 18p pack of toothbrushes. That's a quarter to my American friends.

To create this nail art, you'll need to pick a polish for your base colour, a few others that you want to use for the splodges, a toothbrush and a top coat. You'll also need nail polish remover or acetone because there'll be a bit of cleaning up to do at the end.

The colours I'm using here are (l-r) China Glaze Sunday Funday, Barry M Greenberry, Barry M Blueberry and China Glaze Pink-ie Promise.

I got these toothbrushes from Tesco and for 18p! You can but cheap toothbrushes pretty much anywhere that sells toothbrushes but try to make sure you get ones where the bristles are all the same length.  

Step 1: Paint on your base colour and wait for it to dry completely.

Step 2: Paint your first splodge colour straight from the bottle on to the bristles near the end of the toothbrush. Be quite generous with the polish otherwise it won't transfer on to your nails.

Step 3. Carefully dab the brush down on to your nails to create your first splodges. Wait for them to dry before moving on.

Step 4. Apply more colours in the same way until you're happy with the look. Between each colour, you'll need to clean the toothbrush and wait for each layer to dry. You can clean the toothbrush by wiping it with a tissue or dipping it in to nail polish remover/acetone and drying on a cotton pad. 

Step 5: The finished result might be a bit bumpy so apply a thick layer of your top coat.

Step 6: Finally, use a small paintbrush dipped in acetone or polish remover to clean up any of the bits that got around your nail and you're done!

Twitter ♥ Bloglovin' ♥ Tumblr