Hey everyone. Apologies for being such a rubbish blogger recently - my dissertation is taking over my life! I managed to squeeze in a little bit of nail art this morning, but I'm afraid it's nothing special. I decided to do mix-and-match nails of a few different nail art techniques, and I chose black and white polish to keep it simple. All of these designs were achieved by using basic tools, so if you fancy having a go at any of them, make sure you keep reading :)

Natural Collection 'White'

W7 'Black'

Fine nail art paint brush

Striping tape

Dotting tool

Essie 'Good To Go' top coat

So on my thumb nail I created basic stripes. To do this, I applied a base of white, and once dry I added striping tape. Then I painted black over the top, and after waiting for a few seconds, I removed the tape. I used to wait agesssss for the second coat of nail polish to dry, but then I realised that this caused it to pull and rip. Similarly, not waiting long enough causes the second coat to bleed into the first. So the best thing to do is wait until the polish is tacky rather than runny, and remove the tape very carefully. Obviously practise makes perfect, and it all depends completely on the type of striping tape and nail polish that you use!

On my index finger I added black polkadots to a white base. I used one of my largest dotting tools to do this, and tried to ensure that each dot was the same size and shape. On my middle finger I created chevrons, which I also used striping tape for (but freehanded with my fine paint brush to clean up any suspicious looking areas!) On my ring finger I added a chessboard, and finally on my little finger a curved, fan pattern. (I don't know the proper term for this sort of design?)

I finished off each of my designs with a clear top coat. Essie 'Good To Go' is my current favourite because it's rapid drying, although I've found that on top of cheap polishes (Sinful Colors, W7, for example) it tends to shrink. I think I might add a mattifying coat to these too, although that's always risky because matte polish is VERY unforgiving of mistakes! What do you think? What's your favourite simple nail art technique?