Nail Art.

Painting my nails isn't something I ever did a whole lot, and I still don't. But when my mom offers for us to go out for a mani/pedi, how can I resist? Sometimes, I get inspired to do a cool design on my own for my nails.

Lately, I've seen a lot of cool and new nail painting techniques. Both on the internet and in person. One of those techniques came out about a year ago, and is called "Cracked."

Also known as Shatter or Crackle, the Cracked polish is applied over a base color of your choice, and the polish seems to "shrink" into the random blotches that it dries as. I have never tried the polish myself, but I've seen many cool things done with it. Black shatter over a gold base coat results in a leopard print theme.

Nowadays, I've seen many new things being done with normal colors, done in layers and patterns. Some of those styles are done with tape.

A base coat is applied, and let dry. Then you can cut strips of tape, and stick it on in the pattern you want. With the tape on, apply a coat of another color on top. Then the tape is taken off, and the nail polish is left to dry. (You may or may not have to let it dry before you take off the tape; I have not tried for myself yet.)

In the example (and blurry, sorry) picture, the girl did rainbow stripes as a base (now ain't that fancy), then a black overcoat with three skinny diagonal stripes.

The next style is something that I will for sure be trying this summer.

This is done with a similar technique as the last one, by using tape. A base color is applied, and let dry. Then you put tape on, revealing only the ends of your nails. The color of your choice is applied to the revealed nail tip. Let dry, then take off the tape, and you have polychromatic French tips.

The example picture used yellow as a base, and red on her tips.

Another trend I've seen is using a nail art pen, where you can draw on the dried nail polish coat.

I bought one of these in silver about a week ago. I haven't used it yet, but I'm excited to. Some really cool designs can be made with these now. Much more complicated, elaborate, and skilled aesthetic designs, in the past only been done in the salon.

I love these nails. It would take forever to do them though. If I could successfully though, then it'd be so worth it. Challenge for this summer? I think so.