Ikat Nails

Sorry I have been a little absent recently, I had a terrible bug the week before last, that wiped me out completely and its taken the last week to sort myself out. But enough about the rubbish illness the Autumn brings, and on to the amazing new things we get!

 Autumn has to be my favourite season.  It's a nice crisp season but still a bit sunny and fresh... on a good day. I love all the orange and dark brown colours you see in nature and also in the beauty and fashion world. Dark lips and metallic eyes are some of my favourites, but of course I also love the new nail colours! My newest one is this Barry M colour called 'Mustard' from the Gelly collection. I have been looking for a colour like this and it was the last one on the shelf so I knew I had to snap it up.

Now I am under no pretense that this colour looks good on me. As a fair skinned blonde I simply CANNOT get away with wearing any shade of yellow, even a warmer one like this. It washes out my skin completely, however it is such a useful colour for the nail art collection, and my Ikat nail design you are about to see really warmed up the colour and added a more orangey tone to it which works better for me.

I used 'Mustard' as my base and then blobbed on some really rough diamond shapes using 'Bright Red' also from Barry M. There was another Gelly from the new Gelly collection called 'Paprika' which I would have liked to use for this part, as I think it would have warmed up the mustard even more, but maybe next time.

Once I'd done the red diamonds, I did some smaller white diamonds in the middle. Finally, I dotted a black diamond in the middle of the white, and then drew long black lines in a downward motion on the outside of the red diamond.

Ikat is a rich weave so you don't have to be particularly neat at this stage because you want that stripey woven affect. This is actually quite easy to achieve if you have a steady hand. A lot of tutorials suggested using a small brush to get the woven affect but I just used my black nail art pen and feel I still got the same desired look.

I'm glad I used more Autumnal colours, as I think it looks quite native american which is what Ikat reminds me off.

Be on the look out for more Autumnal manicures coming soon!