Dry Brush Stripes

Hello Lovelies!  Today, I have an incredibly easy, no tool nail art design for you.  For this week's technique for the Nail that Technique Challenge (from Instagram) is, dry brush.  I've also heard this referred to as dry drag.  I used this same technique in my Tweed Nail Art I created last November.  What's great about this technique is it is almost impossible to mess up.

For this particular design, I started with a white base coat, Sinful Colors 'Snow Me White.'  Be sure to allow your base polish to dry completely.  You might notice I'm showcasing my Cindy hand (aka my dominant hand) for this tutorial for all the solo shots.  I'm doing this for two reasons, I busted three nails on my model hand and because I wanted you to see that this technique is so easy, you can even do it with your non-dominant hand. 

For my color palette, I decided to use bright, slightly neon,  kind of pastel rainbow colors.  All the polishes I used are Ciate Mini's from the advent calendar I opened this past Christmas.  The colors from left to right are: 'Kiss Chase,' 'Cha Cha Cha,' 'Loop the Loop,' 'Apple & Custard,' 'Boom Box,' and 'Talent Scout.'

To do the dry brush technique, you have to dry of the brush.  You do this by simply scraping the excess polish off on the mouth of the bottle.  I found that some of my polishes were a little thin which made it harder to get the brushes as dry as I wanted them, so I dragged the applicator brush on a paper towel to get it as dry as I wanted.  I found in some case I dried the brushes out so good there was no polish to apply to the nail.  In these cases, I simply rubbed the brush around the inner mouth of the bottle which often seemed to be just enough polish to apply to the nail.

For my look, I decided to go with a traditional rainbow scheme (ROY GBIV) with some modifications.  I used pink instead of red, and I skipped indigo all together.  With my applicator brush properly dried, I dragged stripes horizontally across my nail.  Of course, because it is dry drag it doesn't really drag, it kind of skips across the nail this is why it is important that your base color is dry.  If your base isn't dry enough it will pull the base polish when you apply your dry brush.  You may have to do a couple applications to get the opacity that you desire.  Once, I was happy with the opacity of the first color, I moved down (or across) the rainbow and applied each color allowing them to overlap just slightly.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on the way you look at things), my nails were a little too short to give me enough room to get a full stripe of purple in.  However, I used purple to create a very thin dry brush tip, which I think looks pretty cool.

I duplicated this process on all my nails.  I found it was quicker to do one color on all my nails, before moving on to the next color.  That way I only had to dry of each brush only once.  As always I performed a little clean up with a brush and acetone.  I then topped off the design with a quick drying top coat.  As a side note, applying the top coat smooths out the design, if you like the rough look of the design before top coat you may want to avoid applying it.

I love this bright, bring on spring, super easy, fun messy looking nail art design.  This technique is easy enough that even a two year old could do it.  It's great for creating fabric like nail art designs, or just something a little different.  It doesn't require any tools, and took very little time to create.  I highly recommend this to any of my fellow Plebes that are looking to try something that won't make you frustrated.  I hope you'll try out this technique yourself, thanks for stopping by, see you next time.

Your Fellow Plebe,