Turkey Nails for Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving!! Thanksgiving is not really celebrated in the Philippines, but I thought I'd make a nail art inspired by the holiday anyway.  Besides, with having work that I love (teaching), a hobby that keeps me inspired (nail art), family, and great friends, I feel I have so much to be thankful for.

I am fond of making cute cartoon animals on my nails, so I thought painting a turkey would be great.  Here is what I came up with:

Turkey Nails for Thanksgiving

Cute, isn't it?? It actually turned out better than I hoped it would :)  So let's begin with the tutorial!

Materials:

1. Nail Prep
2. Base Coat
3. Top Coat (Items 1-3 all from Dazzle Dry's Trinity Set)
4. Nail polish in light blue green (DD Casablanca)
5. Acrylic Paint
6. Paint brushes (better if you have nail art brushes)
7. Nail polish in black and white (The Face Shop or you may also use acrylic paint for this)
8. Dotting tools

Procedure:

After sanitizing nails with nail prep and applying base coat, paint all nails with light blue green.

Start making the feathers by making a fan-like outline using peach acrylic paint.

Fill in the fans with peach paint, then add red details like so.

Outline the turkey tails with dark brown paint.

For the turkey, I made a big brown oval first using a fatter brush.  I then added the tails following the same method shown above.  Eyes were dotted on with nail polish and dotting tools, and other details are painted on.
*Sorry I don't have step-by-step pics for this, was rushing to finish! :(

Apply 2 layers of top coat.  See the difference after top coat? Works like magic!

This nail art is so adorable it makes me feel sorry for all the turkeys that are about to be devoured in the coming days!!

Let's take another look at the finished design from a different lighting before proceeding to some helpful tips:

Turkey nails by nailingitdown.blogspot.com

Helpful Tips:

• When painting thin details like outlines, dip only the tip of the brush in the paint.  Thant way, lines go on thinner.
• I used peach  for the tails because I wanted a touch of pink in my art (pink being the most flattering to my skin tone).  I imagine beige would also look nice :)
• If you are using Dazzle Dry like me, it would be better to top coat before painting with acrylic.  Acrylic paint is erasable with alcohol, and without the top coat the lacquer finish gets ruined by the alcohol.  

Thank you for reading!!  Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!