Valentine's Day Series: Pink Peonies / Gee Whiskers!

Hello, girls! My name is Luzanne and I have a beauty blog called Pink Peonies - I’m so excited to be doing a guest post here on Gee Whiskers! For those of you who know me, I love anything beauty-related - and so for today's post I decided to do a VERY easy nail art tutorial for Valentine's Day. I did something similar to this design last year for Valentine's Day and I received so many compliments. This year, I'll probably do something a little bit different but will definitely add a heart to the design again. If you would like to see what I do this year, you can follow me on Instagram, my username is: Luzanne6325

Seriously, guys, if you can cut using a pair of scissors - you won't have any trouble creating this manicure. I'm no expert at nail art, but I do like to create easy, yet interesting manis every now and again (especially for special days like V-day, Christmas and Halloween). To keep it simple (I wanted to make sure everyone would be able to do this manicure - even beginners), I decided to only do one accent nail on the ring finger. You definitely don't need all the items I show below i.e. if you only use one nail polish as a base- and top coat, then that's perfect. If you only want to use red and white nail polishes, go for it! You can tweak this design any way you like...

Here's what you'll need:

The polishes I chose for this manicure is: OPI I'm Not Really A Waitress (my absolute favourite red polish), Essie Blanc (a pure opaque white polish), Revlon Silver Dollar (a metallic silver polish) & OPI Which Is Witch? (a holographic glitter polish to add dimension to the silver).

Extras include: A pair of scissors, sellotape, base coat, top coat, nail polish remover (if you make a mistake - which you won't because it's so easy), cuticle oil (I always add a bit of cuticle oil to my cuticles when I do a mani - this moisturises and nourishes the delicate skin around the nails).

Let's get started!

Start by painting your nails with your preferred polishes (I painted all my nails with 2 coats each). You can alternate the colours any way you like, but ensure one nail is painted using a white nail polish (this will make the heart you paint on top of it POP). Let your nails dry for a good 15 minutes.

You need to make sure the white polish is completely dry because we are going to be sticking sellotape on the painted nail and if the nail is even the slightest bit wet, the sellotape will remove some of the polish when you peel it off.

Cut a piece of sellotape (about 2cm) off and stick it onto the back of your hand. Peel the sellotape off and stick on onto the back of your hand again (this gets rid of most of the stickiness). You want the sellotape to be sticky enough to adhere to your nail, but not too sticky as to remove some of the nail polish when you peel it off the nail.

Fold the sellotape at an angle, this will make it easier to separate the 2 sides from one another later.

Cut a half-heart from the folded sellotape.

Unfold (peel away the 2 sides) the sellotape and you will be left with a cut-out heart - how cute!

Now you need to try work fast because you don't want the sellotape to be stuck to your nail for too long. Stick the heart onto your accent nail, trying to keep it centred. Press down around the heart's edges gently to remove any air bubbles that might let some of the red nail polish leak in between the nail and the sellotape (this will ruin your perfect heart design).

Paint your favourite red nail polish over the open heart area (you can be fairly messy with this part) but as soon as you're finished covering the heart with the polish, peel the sellotape off. If you leave the sellotape on and let the red polish dry, when you remove the sellotape, it will take some of the red polish with it. Trust me, I've learnt from my mistakes.

Let that red heart polish dry as well for a good amount of time too. If you apply your top coat too early, it will drag some of the red polish down (ruining your design). While you're waiting for the heart to dry, you can apply your glitter polish to the silver nails. Once the red heart is dry, apply your favourite top coat.

And there you have it, an easy Valentine's Day manicure that looks like you put a lot of effort into it but now you know, it's not difficult to do at all! You can even replace the red polish with a bright pink polish - that would be stunning!

I hope you guys enjoyed this easy Valentine's Day inspired nail tutorial - and if you decide to try it out, tweet or Instagram a photo and tag me, I would love to see your mani!