Tuesday Tutorial: Freehand Butterfly Step-By-Step

Look out it's Tuesday again!  You know what that means, we're gonna learn something new here.  Here's the look we're going to learn how to paint today!

Randomly, this nail art came about because of a personality test :)  I'll tell you all about that after the tutorial, in case you're interested.  If you're just here for the pictorial step-by-step, well then let's get to it!

1) After base coat, paint your accent nail only (so you don't bump the other nails by accident while you're working) with one or two coats of the background to your butterfly.

2) Using the color you have chosen for your butterfly and a dotting tool(or toothpick) place two medium sized dots on your nail like so:

3) Now taking a very small detailing brush(I just took a brush and cut it down so it had a small number of long hairs) and the same color, sweep two curved lines up from the inner portion of the dots.  You're going to be "trying" to make everything symmetrical.

4) Starting up at the points you just made at the top of the nail, curve two lines down to rest on top of the dots and connect with where you started the lines in step 3.

5) For this step you're going to add a small bubble on each wing going from the curve in step 4 to the middle of each dot.  Then you're going to fill in the tip of each wing a bit- see at the apex, just fill that in a bit so it looks like a little triangle within each wing's tip.

6) Taking the same color again, make a little curve between the wings and then draw a straight line down from that, extending just father than the dots.

7) To add the bottom curve of the wings, take your brush and make "U" shapes from the bottom of each dot up to just above the line you just drew down.  These kind of look like earlobes, no?

8) Side note- this looks really textured and cray, but believe me your top coat will even all that out so don't you worry.  Now if you look at the difference between this picture and the one above- we are filling in the space between the wings.  Look at how all you can see of pink left in the "Earlobes" we just drew are little tear drops now.  Using your little brush still, just fill in that empty space all except for teardrops :)  Then add a small curving line down from the teardrops, and add a few small bumps to each one.

9) Last step for the butterfly- add antennae and then a few curves strokes just inside the teardrops and the upper part of the wings.  Do your other nails while you give this some time to dry and then add two coats of fast-drying top coat to smooth out the design, and there you have it!  

What I did for the other nails was to paint the thumb and middle finger the same color as the butterfly, paint the pinky and index finger the same as for your accent finger, and then add a shimmer top coat to the index finger for a little more dimension.

This one does take a bit more work and patience than some of my other tutorials lately, but if you don't ever push yourself then how do you know what you can achieve?  The colors I used for this look are Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Frutti Petutie and Sinful Colors New Wave.

If you've got what you came for, head down to check out the song of the day, and you're all done ;)  We'll see you next week, thanks for stopping by.  If you're interested in what prompted this tutorial today, learning more about my inner butterfly, keep reading.

So, yesterday a youtube video came on in my suggested playlist that was of this girl talking about her personality identity being INFJ...I don't know how many of you have taken that test but I have and thought it had been a while since I'd taken it.  Off to the website I went and retook this personality test. Honestly I couldn't remember what I tested as in the past, other than that I ranked like 90% "I" (which is introverted if you're not acquainted with this personality determinant based on the Briggs-Myers research).  The part where this test becomes pertinent to this post...coming up I promise...is that there was a couple questions in there talking about how you most often function creatively, following step-by-step instructions or usually just plotting your own path without regard to traditional methods, visually learning something or reading each action to take, internalizing it, and producing an outcome.  Whether or not you can usually imitate something pretty well...now I know I'm butchering these questions because my short-term memory is shot right now, but you get the gist. So- I was thinking about how I create.  I don't usually just drag up some image to my mind out of nowhere.  I am heavily motivated by images and I do really like step-by-step instructions and when I was a kid I used to copy cartoons and things.  Anyway...that's what inspired this nail art: thinking about how if I want to, I can usually make an image imitate something I'm looking at.  I thought about how I usually do really simple tutorials so  you're not intimidated by anything difficult.  That appeals to parts of my personality too.  However, another part of my personality likes to reach for things a littler farther out of my reach, and derives satisfaction from personal achievement.  That's probably connected to the part of me that's so stubborn too.  I have a hard time giving up on projects.  Anyway, how well do you know your personality type?  Are you like me with how you learn and create?  That's just a small part of the profile.  Another part of my personality is learning about myself and why I function certain ways...are you that way too?  So it turns out that the test I took today prescribes me as being ISFP and where I rank a strong 74% introverted now, I'm just a small percentage into the other three traits, so I'm a little less of a dead ringer for the others.  Even still, they give you a nice description of your personality type and you can further see how that affects your career and relationships.  If this kind of stuff intrigues you and you want to check it out, go here http://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test 

Well that's it for today.  Glad you stopped by!

Song of the Day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZySwRm1WZkE

Over and out