How To - Fruit nails

There is nothing better in the summer sunshine than eating fresh summer fruits. Well now you can have the look of summer fruits on your nails in my step-by-step guide to fruity nails. In this I will show you how to do both strawberry and watermelon nails.

Start by painting your nails with a base coat, to protect the nails from staining. Next paint the nails with two coats of a red polish. I used Maybelline color show in Power Red. I only did an accent nail for this design, but you can do as many nails as you wish.

 Next, take a green striper and create a zig-zag pattern across the top of the nail. To make sure that I got the shape that I wanted, I drew the outline on my nail with a white nail art pen, and then went over this line with the striper. Fill in the top section of the nail with two coats of green polish applied with the striper.

Finally, take a white striper or nail art pen and draw small lines or dots onto your nail. When these have dried, go over them with a yellow colour. Doing this will help the yellow to stand out much more on the red background. Finish your design with a top coat to blend all the layers together and you are done!

Next, how to do watermelon nails. 

Start by applying a base coat to protect your nail. Next cut two pieces of masking tape into thin strips, and apply them to your nail so that you create a small triangle shape. You only want to apply these to a small section of the nail, as you only want to create a basic triangle shape.

Apply one or two coats of red polish, I used the same Maybelline polish as before. Whilst the polish is still a little tacky, carefully remove the tape.

You should be left with something that looks like this.

Apply a white line of polish to the bottom of your nail. Do this slowly to get the most even line. Don't panic if the line isn't straight, you can go back and fix this later. I used L.A colors color craze nail polish in Energy Source.

Once the white is dry, go over this with a line of green, leaving a small gap of white poking out of the top. I used L.A colors color craze nail polish in Palm Tree. Once the green is dry, if you are not happy with the white line, go back over it with a white striper, as this will give you more control and a neater line. 

Using a striper or a dotting tool, draw on black lines to create the watermelon seeds. Finish with a top coat to protect your design, and help blend all the layers together.

And that's how easy it is to create fruit effect nails that look good enough to eat. 

By Lucy Bunce