Peacock Themed Mani

                    I love this set because the color scheme works so beautifully together. To achieve this look you'll need a thin brush, nail tape, and a dotting tool or toothpick. The polish colors I used were Black, Gold, Emerald, White and Nude. 


                  I originally painted this in 2013. It was my first tutorial that I uploaded to my personal Instagram account, so I apologize in advance for the poor picture quality and the lack of pictures in between steps. It's a learning process :)

                  That being said, I have no pictures for the steps I took to paint the index and the pinkie. All I did was paint the entire nails with a couple of coats of a shimmery black polish. After they were dry, I used my dotting tool to put dots on the ends in gold polish. 

                 
                 For the ring finger I started out by painting the entire nail gold and letting it dry completely. 

 
                     Next, using the nail tape, map out where you want the black diamonds to go. I started with the top corner of my nail with a strip going diagonally and followed with 4 more strips leaving equal spacing between the strips. Then I did the exact same thing on the same nail but starting on the opposite corner. It's a little difficult to explain so I color coated the nail tape to help. I put the red tape down first and then I did the exact same pattern going the opposite direction in the gold tape.  See the picture below.

                   After you've positioned the tape how you want it, paint over the entire nail with black polish. 

                     Do not let it dry completely or else when you take off the tape most of the black polish with come off too. Wait about 10 seconds or so (less if its a quick-dry polish) and careful peel off the tape. Peel off the strips in the reverse order that you put them in. You want to start with whichever piece is on top, which would be the last piece you taped down. When you take off all the pieces, it should look like this:

                    If you have some black polish the comes out of the lines you can touch it up using a thin brush and the same gold polish you used for the based coat. After the black has dried, use a dotting tool or a toothpick to put the emerald and gold dots on the black diamonds. 

                   
                         That's it for the ring finger! Don't forget the topcoat once it's nice and completely dry! 


                Next is the peacock feather. I started out by painting the base of my nail white. After the white polish dried I went over it with a coat of a very watery nude polish I had. If you have a thick colored nude you can use that without using the white base coat. That was just the only color I had on hand at the time. 

                    Start the feather by painting the stem first. A diagonal line, but don't go all the way to the bottom. Tip: I use a quick motion to get a nice line. The slower I go and the more I concentrate on it, the shakier my lines get. The quicker the better for me. 

                      At the base make a "U" shape and fill it in with the gold polish. This will be the eye of the feather. 

                       Then, with quick downward strokes, make the little "hairs" of the feather. You can make them as thick or thin as you want or long or bushy. That's the beauty of nature, not all feathers are created equal so don't worry about it being perfect. 
 

 


                    In the center of the eye make a big black dot and put an emerald dot on top of it, but slightly below the black dot so you can still see the black dot. 

                       I went over some of the "hairs" of the feather and the empty spots with some gold polish. Use the same downward strokes starting each stroke at the stem and just feather it out. 

               
                    I also added a little bit of green.

                      You can fill in with more black or leave the green out. After its dry, its top coat time!