NOTD 3/17/15: St. Patrick's Day Nails

I wasn't originally planning on doing much nail art for St. Patrick's day since I've been super busy lately. But all the kids at my job (I do before and after school child care) love seeing my nail art and wanted me do something special for today, so this is what I came up with for them!

Polishes used:
China Glaze Emerald Sparkle (glittery emerald) - thumb and pinky
OPI Goldeneye (metallic gold) - index, middle, and ring
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri OMGhost! (white crème) - middle and ring
Sinful Colors Garden Party (medium greem crème) - shamrocks

I painted my thumb and pinky with three coats of ES, my index finger with three coats of Goldeneye, and my middle and ring fingers with three coats of OMGhost!. Then I added a quick layer of top coat to every nail. I like adding top coat over my base when I'm doing nail art so that if I mess up, I can use remover and not have it mess up the base color since the remover would have to go through the top coat first.

To do the little shamrocks, I used the smaller side of the pink dotting tool from this set. I dipped the dotting tool into GP, made a dot, and dragged that dot down a little bit so it made a little tapered out blob. Then I made another dot right next to the first one and dragged that down so it met the end of the first "blob" at a point. I did that three times to make each shamrock, except for one on each nail where I did four! I pretty much followed Cutepolish's technique here. After that, I took an orange stick (because I was too lazy to get a nail art brush), dipped that into GP, and dragged that down below the shamrock leaves to make a stem. Using an orange stick is a good substitute for a brush, you just have to be a little more careful with it and use a stippling motion instead of a dragging one. I didn't make a pattern on the shamrock nails because I wanted them to look random. After painting all the shamrocks, I took Goldeneye and dotted it where there was too much white showing using the same size dotting tool. On the one four leaf clover on each nail, I added a piece of green hex glitter from this set that I got from BornPrettyStore. I finished everything off with one more layer of top coat.

I love how this turned out! I really like having my accent nails either just on my ring finger, or together like I did here. On my right hand I have the thumb and pinky the same, but my index and middle fingers have shamrocks on them and my ring finger is gold. I really like how these look pretty intricate, when in reality they're so simple and easy!

Thanks for reading!