Distressed Effect Nail Art (On a Budget!)

Hey everyone, tonight I’m doing a little tutorial on how to create a ‘distressed-effect’ nail look using tools from around the house as part of a competition run by Moneysupermarket.com – you can read the details and enter yourself here!

You will need:

Two colours of nail polish – here I used Avon Twilight Blue and OPI Alpine Snow, but you can use any two colours of your choice. Remember the greater the contrast in tone (i.e. light and dark), the more eye-catching the effect will be.
A topcoat – here I used Revlon Quick Dry Topcoat.
Some cotton buds or q-tips.
Nail polish remover, preferably containing acetone.

Let’s begin!

Step one: Paint all your nails in the ‘underneath’ colour – the colour you want to peep out through the holes. It doesn’t matter if you can still see your nail line, as long as the colour is quite bold and striking it will be fine at just one coat.

Step two: Paint your nails in a generous layer of topcoat over the base colours – this will help protect the base colour from the acetone later on.

Step three: Paint your nails in one thin coat of the ‘top’ colour – the colour you will be making holes in.

Step four: Soak your cotton bud in nail polish remover, to the point at which it is dripping the remover.

Step five: Begin rubbing the cotton bud onto the nail in a small concentrated area, I did this up and down, and you will see the top colour begin to disappear. Repeat this in different areas all over the nail to create the ragged holey effect. Remember not to rub the cotton bud so hard that you begin to remove the underneath colour!

Step six: Take a new cotton bud, and repeat steps four and five with each new nail.

Step seven: Add a generous layer of topcoat over all the nails – this will smooth out your design.

Step eight: Admire your work! 🙂

Distressed effect nail art moneysupermarket black and blue faded acetone patchy nails uk nail blog tutorial (5)

So that concludes my money-saving nail art tutorial for the evening! What are your top mani-money-savvy tips?! Will you be entering this competition? All you need to enter is to post your own money saving nail art tutorial on your blog and email competitions@moneysupermarket.com with ‘Money Smart Nail Art’ as the subject line, with your link to your blog post, your nail, email address and phone number. See here for more details!