It's so hot I'm melting! Dripping nail art...

Inspired by the sweltering recent (and probably brief) appearance of British summer, the end of my hospital placements for the year, and the arrival of my new dotting tools, I decided to make my last nail art (and thus my last blog post) before exams melt before your very eyes!

Intrigued? Find out more... :)

Dripping paint nail art is a fun and fiddly technique that can be done with any combination of colours and styles, and adapted to create some spectacular designs. Have a look around t'interwebz and you'll see everything from simple two colour designs, to ice cream with sprinkles, and melting rainbows and galaxies! I kept it simple for my first go as it was the first time I've ever used a dotting tool, and I wanted to test out my latest nail polish purchase (which I will be reviewing after my exams so look out for that around mid june!). 

Left Hand

Right Hand

In case you couldn't tell from my previous nail art, purple is my favourite colour and as such I have a particular weakness for purple nails. So that's why for this look I used the following shades:

1. Rimmel Lycra Pro Professional Finish in "312 Ultra Violet" for the base.
2. Rimmel Cocktail Colour in "110 Baby Bellini" for the drips.

And of course I used my Rimmel 5 in 1 Nail Treat base and top coat too :)

110 Baby Bellini

(My picture does not do justice to how gorgeous a colour it is. 

Trust the colour of the stock photo instead!)

Now you know the score... there are tutorials everywhere for how to create this look so have a gander round Youtube and Blogger for a good one that suits you best. (My personal fave is one from CutePolish.) Instead of showing you how to do this look, here are my top 5 tips on how to do this look as best you can:

1. See the light. This is probably going to sound really daft but I would really recommend doing this in natural light, especially if you're working with particularly glossy/shimmery colours. I did mine last night under artificial light which made it really hard to see what I was doing properly and when I look at my nails in natural light now I can see that I missed bits when I was filling in the colour :( If you have to do it with artificial light try not to sit too close to the source as this will reflect off the shine of the nails and make it hard to see what you're doing.
2. Assert your dominance. Of all the nail art I've done so far this requires the most fine motor skill. If you're a beginner nail artist like myself, unless your blessed with the powers of being ambidextrous, I recommend you practice doing the detail with your non-dominant hand on a nail swatch wheel until you're comfortable using it for such fiddly stuff. I don't have a swatch wheel yet but I wish I had invested before doing this as I wasted a lot of polish trying to get it right :(
3. Speed demon. Quick drying nail polish is NOT right for this look! Baby Bellini is a beautiful shade and I think it worked really well in the end, but it dries very quickly and made it difficult to fill in the shading without it going tacky and lumpy. I would recommend using a quick drying polish for the base, but going for something that takes a little longer to dry for the detail, at least until you're confident doing this technique quickly.
4. Seeing spots. Unless you have quite long or wide nails don't go overboard with the number of drips you have! I would suggest a maximum of 4 for thumbs, 3 for index, middle, and ring fingers, and finally 2 for the little fingers. This is so that you have enough room to add the detail required to look good! Too many dots and you and up with all your drips running into each other.
5. Have fun! Even though this look is quite fiddly, it can really look amazing and leaves you with a lot of scope to do what you want with it! Turn it into ice cream by using an ice cream coloured base, making the the drips look like sauce, and using a thin nail art brush or fine dotting tool to add different coloured "sprinkles" over the sauce. Create a gradient look as a base for your drips, or go even more daring and have a patterned base like a rainbow or flowers! Try UV/glow in the dark nail polish for your drips and see how it looks with the lights off, or use deep red over natural nails for a gory halloween inspired look! The possibilities are truly endless so have fun with it and try something new :D

An Instagram shot because the colours were 

just not showing up well enough with my DSLR :(

Overall I would recommend trying this technique if only for its endless possibilities! You can make your own dotting tool if you don't fancy investing in some but to be honest when they come as cheap as £1.45 (+ £0.79 p&p) you have no excuse not to buy a set :P

This will be my last nail art or in fact beauty review until my exams finish on June 13th :( but in the meantime feel free to share your tips and attempts at dripping nails in the comment box below!! Ciao for now lovelies :D