I’ve been dying to use this new color from China Glaze’s Avant Garde Collection–a pretty lavender color called Tart-y For the Party. I asked my friend/hand model/cutest girl ever Ashely if I could paint her nails again and thank goodness she agreed 🙂 For this look I used: OPI Base Coat China Glaze Tart-y For the Party (Lavender) China Glaze Dandy Lyin’ Around (Shimmery White) China Glaze Recycle (Medium Grey) OPI Nein! Nein! Nein! Ok Fine! (Dark Grey) Layla Ceramic Effects CL25 (Silver Sparkle) OPI Suzi and the 7 Dusseldorfs (dark purple for the leopard spots) Black acrylic paint for the leopard spots Seche Vite Top Coat

China Glaze Tart-y For The Party, Grey Ombre, Leopard Print Nail Art

China Glaze Tart-y For The Party, Grey Ombre, Leopard Print Nail Art

To begin, prep your nails by pushing back your cuticles, trimming any loose hang nails (be sure not to over trim as this can cause MORE hang nails!), filing your nails to your desired shape, lightly buff, and clean with alcohol to remove any oils. The better job you do prepping your nails, the longer your manicure is going to last. Apply a light base coat.

Prep Nails by pushing back cuticles, filing to shape, lightly buffing, applying thin top coat.

Apply the lavender shade to your pinky, middle and pointer finger and then apply a light coat of the white shimmer to your ring and thumb. Repeat on the other hand. After polishing one coat on each hand, reapply a second coat of the lavender on both hands. I love how the China Glaze Tart-y color applied! It almost didn’t need a second coat, but the second coat covered really well. I have used several colors from the Avant Garde Collection and so far I have loved every color! Here’s a pic of the nails right before we did the grey ombre. I applied the silver sparkle ombre on the lavender fingers by making sure to grab as much glitter on the brush as possible and then swiping it about half way to three quarters up the nail. Take a makeup sponge and very lightly blend the sparkle into the lavender. Don’t press too hard or it will damage the purple polish.

China Glaze Tart-y For The Party and China Glaze Dandy Lyin Around

Apply grey omber in thin coats. Add more polish to reach desired ombre effect.

For the grey ombre, swipe the white shimmer polish in a horizontal stripe across the makeup sponge followed by the medium grey and then the dark grey at the top and immediately dab it onto the nail bed. This part gets messy–you will get polish all over your finger bed, but it is easy to clean up with q-tips and polish remover so don’t worry about the mess. Keep dabbing until you get the desired ombre effect. You can add more polish to your makeup sponge and dab some more until you get it just right. Dab the ombre effect onto all the white nails. Here is what your makeup sponge will look like when you are done.

Brush the polish across the makeup sponge in this pattern and dab on nail to reach desired ombre effect

Leopard spots are super easy! The messier the better in some ways 🙂

After you have ombre’d all the nails with silver sparkle and grey polish, add the dark purple leopard spots in various patterns with a crafting stylus or round toothpick.

After you have placed your purple spots, dip your stylus in black acrylic paint and dab around the purple spots in random order. It doesn’t have to be perfect–the messier the better! Add a few random solo dots and then let the spots dry for a few minutes to make sure they don’t bleed when you put on the top coat. A trick to applying top coat is to roll it over the nail. Get a decent sized ball of top coat on the tip of your brush, tilt your nail down, and let the gravity pull the top coat to the tip of your finger. Don’t drag the brush in order not to mess up the nail art. I finished eating my super yummy Cafe Rio Shredded Chicken Salad while the leopard spots were drying. It turned out to be perfect timing because the top coat went on really smooth and none of the spots dragged or pulled with the top coat.

China Glaze Tart-y For The Party, Dandy Lyin Around, Grey Ombre, Leopard Spots Nail Art

Ombre Sparkles, Grey Ombre, Lavender, Leopard Spots Nail Art

I love how Ashley’s nails turned out! I love the China Glaze Avant Garde Collection and want to do more of a Spring Themed mani with them because they are so pretty and fun! I love doing leopard print though and it’s one of my favorite go-to nail art ideas. It’s super easy and anyone can do it! Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks so much for looking! Tootles-Anna