Fall Fox and Owl nails and Operation: Reduce the Effing Bead Stash

Foxes (duh) and owls are some of my favorite animals and I thought they'd make a cute fall themed manicure this week.  I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out!  I keep admiring them, which I don't always do with my nail art.  

I used the most variety of tools in this manicure: brushes, dotting tools, and markers.  I need to play with a larger variety of brushes with smaller bristles than a striper brush to see what I can get with them, but I finally feel as if I have a good handle on the tools and technique.  

Supplies:

Base coat

Nail colors:  I'm using an antique gold, metallic red-orange,metallic orange, metallic brown, black, and white.

Top coat

Dotting tools: Large and small diameter

angled nail art brush (a sacrificial eyeliner brush would work in a pinch)

nail art pen (or sharpie)

Paint all nails in the antique gold color.  The color I'm using, Pure Ice "Bite Me", is a very thin, translucent color that required about 3 coats to get a vibrant shade.  I love this as a background color, but it's definitely a pain.  This is a downside of using cheaper nail polish, but this girl's on a budget.  Let dry completely.

Decide which fingers are going to get the fox and owl treatment.  My ring finger got the fox and my index got the owl.  Using the nail polish brush, paint the top of an oval on about half of the nail.  This can vary on the size of your nails, but I keep mine on the short side. I used Kleancolor "Metallic orange" for the fox base and Pure Ice "I'll Never Tell" for the owl's brown body.  The best way to shape the oval is to make one large stripe down the center of your nail with the brush and then make 2 shorter stripes to either side.  Don't worry if it's not smooth, we've got ears to add.
 Take the angled nail art brush and load it with black for the fox ears and form a triangle by touching the brush to the nail gently.  Do not brush the color on.  Clean the brush well after finishing the colors with acetone and dry the brush on a paper towel before picking up the next color.  Use brown for the tufts of feathers to the side of the owl's head. You can skip this step if  you want a non-horny owl.  Make 2 triangles of white, leaving a small spot of orange in the middle for the nose.  Use the dotting tool for the center of the ears.  The smaller size works well here, just move it around a little until the color fills the interior of the triangle.

On the owl finger, make a semicircle of white for the owl belly.  I did this with the nail polish brush.

Once that was dry, I used the small dotting tool to make 3 dots on the fox head: one at the tip of the nail for the nose and then 2 more just above that.  I kept the spacing narrow to enhance the narrow face of the fox.  I used the large dotting tool to make 2 large dots for the owl eyes and then added black dots to them.  It's a little tricky to keep the dots in the approximate place, so be careful when placing them.

I'm left handed, and doing my dominant hand with my non-dominant hand was pretty difficult.  Other nail artists suggest keeping the brush or tool still and moving your dominant hand up to meet it, but it doesn't solve the problem of my right hand being shakier than my left in general.  Patience and time seem to be the best strategies for me, but my left hand looks less well done

The finished Fox

The finished owl

Last, I added the leaves with the angled brush.  This was similar to the ears, but with a much narrower triangle.  

The leaves didn't stand out much, so I lined them with the nail art pen.  You can do the same with the details on the animals, too.  Finish with a top coat and you're done!


And for something special, here's a little something I finished this week.  I have a TON of glass beads, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them in the long run.  I just want to get rid of them!   Of course, this has no glass beads in it, just some seed beads, green beads that may be malachite  but I'm not quite sure, purple plastic bicones, and one lone amethyst bead.  I'm using the "Parisian Lights" pattern from Jill Wiseman.  It drapes beautifully!