Festive Sugar Skull Nails

 I love how colorful sugar skulls are!  This look is completely customizable and creative.  I did two sugar skulls per hand with confetti style nails in between, but you can do as many sugar skulls as you’d like!

You’ll need:

Base coat

Top coat (I prefer Seche Vite)

Striper brush

Dotting tool

Small round nail gems (optional; I used a set of different colors and shapes from Simply Sweet)

Mint green, white, pink, yellow, bright blue, red and black nail polishes  (You can use any bright colors you want for the accents and confetti nails!  I used: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in 340 Mint Sorbet; Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in 110 Hard to Get; Cover Girl Continuous Color in Parisian Pink 052; Pure Ice in Excuse Me; OPI Nail Lacquer in Can’t Find My Czechbook; OPI Nail Lacquer in I Eat Mainely Lobster; and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in 880 Black Heart)

Start with a clear base coat.  Paint your pinky mint green, your middle finger pink, your thumb yellow, and your ring and index fingers white.  (If you choose to do more or less sugar skulls, you can paint other nails white or choose another one of your bright colors.)

Use your dotting tool to make small dots in your different bright colors in the shape of a circle, with two small circles next to each other just above half way up your nail on all the white nails.  The colors can be in the same order for each circle, or completely different!

Now add some colorful designs to your white nails!  (I stayed near the top of each nail, but you can add details around the sides.)  To keep the look really personal and interesting, do a different design on each sugar skull!  On my ring finger I used my striper brush to put a curvy mint green shape at the tip of my nail.  Then I dipped the striper brush in pink to outline the green shape, add a matching, smaller shape inside the green, and to add some extra curved lines near the top on the sides.

On my index finger I used the dotting tool to place four small pink dots together at the top center part of my nail.  Then I used the dotting tool to put a blue dot in the middle of the pink shape.  I used the striper brush to add curvy blue lines at the sides of the shape.

Now dip your striper brush in black and paint a small shape that is sort of like an upside down heart in the middle of each sugar skull nail, between the colorful circle eyes.  Underneath the upside down heart nose, use the striper brush in black to paint small vertical ovals in a line next to each other, with a thin horizontal line painted through the middle of them.  Now that you have the decorations, nose and teeth, put a small dot of clear polish in the middle of each colorful circle and apply a round nail gem.  I used blue stones on my ring finger and hot pink on my index.  (If you don’t want to use nail gems in the eyes, just use your dotting tool to put either your brightest color or black in the center of the eyes.)

For the confetti nails, use your striper brush dipped in your different bright colors to make short, slightly curved lines going in random directions.  I did roughly 3-4 lines of each bright color (that wasn’t the base color of that nail) for each confetti nail.  Finish with a top coat!   

~Alyssa