Waterfall nails tutorial

 Today's tutorial will focus on create one of the easiest freehand designs, the so called in the community "waterfall" nail art:

This look is, basically, several parallel lines of different lengths and shades of nail polish coming from the same end of the nail. The traditional one would come from the cuticle line, but per the shape of my swatch sticks, I had way more free real estate on the tip so that's why I used them. Which polishes did I use for this look?

You really only need to decide your base colour and the polishes you're gonna do the waterfall effect with, in my case those were:

• Pull & Bear Green Backwoods
• Pull & Bear Golf Green
• Pull & Bear Green Flare
• Pull & Bear Galactic Green
• Pull & Bear Today is Vibrant

You will need a thin brush too. It's your choice if you'd rather have a short brush or a striping brush. I personally prefer the longer bristles because it helps a bit with the linework. This particular nail art is perfect as practice because even if your nails aren't perfectly straight or consistent, the accumulation of them will convey the point anyways.

So, to begin with, paint your base colour. I used Today is Vibrant, a black shimmery polish. I'd recommend a colour that would make the other colours easy to layer on top. This might depend more on the opacity of the other polishes than the base colour:

For the technique, just drop a little amount of polish on your palette. I personally use a yoghourt plastic lid, if you're interested. If you have a silicon mat, you can also use that, as it will be easy to clean after. Then, saturate your brush with that polish and just draw some lines, in different lengths:
 

I acknowledge that this particular green doesn't pop out on the black canvas that well aside from the sheen, which is why I would recommend a lighter colour for your base. I was feeling rebelious and honestly wanted to play with different finishes. This is an amazing technique to just put together polishes that look wildly different.

Continue with the other colours that you want to put in this look, trying to fill up the line you have decided to make your waterfall, either the cuticle or the free edge:

 At this point, don't hesitate to go back and forth to colours that you think don't show up as much or areas that you feel lack just a line of a specific shade to feel complete. It's your nail and you're the master of this design.

Wait for a bit before applying your top coat, as you don't want to smear and blur these lines or contaminate the brush of your top coat. Specially if there are lines that are too close, the thickness will make it dry a bit slower than if used as normally directed. That thickness, on the other hand, won't be an issue after the seal of the top coat, if you're concerned by that.

And that would be it! I think this technique is perfect to practice, as you can see some of my nails are far from perfect and it's still not something that bothers me. Think that dripping liquid is imperfect in the path it takes! I hope you give it a try with your favourite nail polishes and tell me how it went!