If you automatically thought “The Purple Leopard!” upon reading this title then you get my humor way too well and I’m officially creeped. Now, if only I had some sassy sax music to go along with this post. Oh wait!

Please play that in the background as you read my post. While you’re at it, light some fragrant, over-priced candles from Yankee and keep reading. You will need the following for this tutorial:

Let it be known that this was my second attempt at taking the “here’s my shit” picture because the first time around, this happened:

Boyfriend, y u photobomb my polish? Anyway, you will need three actual polish colors for this tutorial: one for the background, one for the inside of the spots, and one for the outline of the spots. I always think it looks better when you stay within the same color family but do what you want. I’m not your mother. I used a nail brush, but you can probably get away with just using the nail polish bottle brush if you don’t have fancy nail brushes. First, paint on your base coat and your background color.

I am so sorry for the dinky timestamp on the corner of every picture (Editor’s note: hey Taylor, we cropped it! Oh the magic of Photoshop). I’m just getting used to my camera and I realized way too late that the timestamp setting was flicked to on. You’ll never know what time I took the pictures for next Nail Friday. I promise.

Next, add your spot centers. I used Orly’s “Space Cadet” for this because it’s the most beautiful, flaw-free polish on planet Earth. Try to space the spots evenly from each other and have some hanging off of the edges. The spots shouldn’t be perfect circles and instead, more like kidney beans/clouds/ovals.

Next, take your outline color and carefully put a border around each spot. You don’t want to make a complete border around the spot but rather, create parenthesis around each one. Some of them can even have a U-shaped border in lieu of parenthesis. Leopard spots are random and imperfect so just fly by the seat of your pants and don’t be too particular.

Seal it with some Seche Vite and then take one of those weird claw-hand pose pictures that all nail blogs do (see above).

You’re done and goddamnit are you glamorous. Just between me and you, Feminspire readers, this was one of the EASIEST tutorials I’ve done do far. It’s almost fool-proof and took a minimal amount of time away from my “Breaking Bad” finale viewing. Comment below with suggestions, questions, your experience with leopard nails, how George Michael made you feel inside, and confused proclamations of attraction for Jesse Pinkman.

Written by Taylor Blakin
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