Now, if only I had taken Ron Swanson’s advice up there, I would have an actual step-by-step tutorial for you this week. The truth is, I paid for a fancy deep-chocolate brown manicure yesterday and I just feel way too financially guilty to paint over it when my nails don’t have but one chip in them yet. Thankfully, I’m a gigantic nail weirdo and so I have some archived nail designs that I can walk you through. I’ll make sure to use a ton of adjectives so that such a vivid mental picture of the tutorial is made that you’ll all forget what a douchebag I am.

These two tutorials are not only based around how to make white polish more interesting, they are also based on two of Marina and the Diamonds‘ alter egos: Electra Heart and Primadonna Girl. Electra Heart is pretty self-explanatory (hearts, duh) and the Primadonna Girl connection is explained in the image below:

Look at those fierce, Lichtenstein-esque nails! For the Electra Heart nails, you will need an opaque white polish and a red polish. You can also be creative and make rainbow hearts, glitter hearts, polka-dotted hearts – the world is your oyster. In my opinion, this tutorial works best on pointy-ish nails because otherwise, your heart is kind of blorpy and round.

Start off with your base coat and then paint all of your nails with the white polish. Turn your nails so that the tips are facing towards you and then, using the brush and painting across rather than down, make two round swoops 2/3rds up the nail for the top of the heart. Then paint the rest of the nail down to the tip. If you’re like me and have shaky hands and fancy nail guide stickers, use number 2 to guide you.

Make sure to let it dry for quite a bit before your Seche Vite coat so that you don’t smear your red heart all over the white background (sounds like a “Fall Out Boy” song lyric). If the hearts aren’t doing it for you or you have super round nails and don’t like fat hearts, then the Primadonna Girl tutorial is for you. You will also need an opaque white but instead of red polish and stickers, you will need a black nail art pen or skinny nail art brush (also in black).

Paint on your base and white coat and then follow it up with a coat of Seche Vite. If you don’t let the white dry all the way, the pen will make indents when you go to outline your nail which is not attractive. Once dry, carefully create a thin border around each nail. You want to start out thin because you can always make it thicker, but you can’t make it thinner. You want your line as neat as possible, but don’t fret if your dominant hand looks a hot mess. This is completely normal and you’ll get better at it the more you practice. If you’re a perfectionist, ask a friend to outline your dominant hand for you! I wouldn’t recommend using another top coat after you draw your outline as the nail art pen polish usually has a different consistency that is more likely to smear no matter what you do (in my experience). If you like living on the edge/redoing your hard work, then by all means swipe on another top coat.

Your nails will instantly look pop art comic book-y. Let it be known that these are the only nails I have ever done that made my boyfriend go “Wow, I really actually like those.”

Hopefully you liked these tutorials despite the fact that I decided to sacrifice your guys’ reading pleasure to have fancy fingers. The color I’m currently wearing is called “Lady Godiva” by Essie and while I’m usually not a big Essie fan (or of the color brown too, really), this color is absolutely delicious. I think I was just really hungry when I chose it though, to be honest with you guys. Either way, I haven’t tried to eat my fingers yet so I call that a win.

Comment below with suggestions for next week, your favorite nail polish color ever, Marina and the Diamonds ravings, or comments about how disappointed you are with the lack of actual tutorial (sorry, not sorry…maybe a little sorry).

Written by Taylor Blakin
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