Animal Crossing furniture on grass nails tutorial

Welcome to the tenth nail art tutorial that I've done. I thought I wanted to try and top myself due to such a number, so again I doubted on which idea to go for... and I ended up going for two things at once. Let's do this Animal Crossing grass nail with a piece of furniture on top. Littering, I know, what a role model!

 

As you can see, this look has two layers to it. Well, honestly, these are more than two layers of nail polish, but I think you can understand what I meant. First, we're going to fake the grass of an Animal Crossing game on our nail, and then, we'll drop the furniture in the middle of it. Let's begin reviewing the shades I used, though of course you can look for others. Maybe you want fall grass, who knows?

 

My selection of polishes for today were my green holographic Holo Tacos and then a couple of crèmes for the Animal Crossing leaf on top. This deserved using them:

• Holo Taco's Green Taffy
• Holo Taco's Full Charge
• Holo Taco's Mint Mojito
• Holo Taco's Lost in the Woods
• Holo Taco's Not Milky White
• Holo Taco's Green Screen

I know that I'm using two discontinued polishes, and believe me, it pains me more than any other. Specially Full Charge, you can see my fill line and it's looking rough. My fill line for Green Taffy is similar, but I could snatch a second bottle for a back up. I wasn't that lucky with the discontinued holo.

In any case, let's begin with the first thing we do always: after your base coat, apply your base colour until opacity. In my case, it was Green Taffy:

Next, we're going to simulate Animal Crossing grass. I'm using this image as reference:

So, Animal Crossing grass is made of triangles of different sizes and orientations in various shades of green over the green background. Perfect for me. I started with Full Charge, doing a couple of bigger triangles and several smaller ones. Make sure not to overdo it, or else you won't have enough space. I used a detailer brush for mine. For the big ones, I started making the outline and then filling them in with a bit more of polish. The small ones used the opposite technique, place a small drop of polish with my brush and extending it a bit until it resembled a triangle enough:

 

The holographic makes it look a bit more cohesive, which maybe is not the best idea for this kind of photograph, specially when I'm dealing with real life circumstances that don't allow me to take photos the way I'd prefer to, but we move on. I don't think I'm cracking a secret code when I tell you that the next steps are repeating these exact steps with your other two polishes. You don't want your shapes to touch, just be close enough. For colour distribution... I didn't do that well. I don't know if mapping out your nail is feasible but I can tell that I didn't do it. I just went for it and I think it got close enough!

 

You can leave it here if you want, after your top coat. This would be a nice look as a manicure with the rest of the design as accents, even! Experiment with different finishes. Crèmes would look stunning, also in matte. Or mix and match for a fun effect! I opted for holographics to give it a little bit of contrast compared to the Animal Crossing's iconic leaf on top being painted with crèmes.

For the leaf, yes, this is going to sound rough, but I free handed it. I had a reference on sight at all times. For the outline effect, my little secret here was doing the leaf first in white and then doing the leaf inside in green. Making an outline is something that I don't feel like I can accomplish, my line thickness would not be super consistent, so I decided to do the leaf in white first:

I know it looks a bit lumpy bit it was more visual than actually textured. What helped me here is to place your anchor points where you want your figure to be, and then, reference at sight, do your lines with enough paint to cover but not too much to drip around. That's why I preferred using an opaque white here! You can also put a top coat before drawing and using acrylic paint for an easier time fixing your mistakes, but I lived dangerously. After giving it ample time to dry, to avoid mixing it with the polish on top, we're going to paint it again but slightly smaller. The outlines will help a lot for you to draw the new shape, believe me, your guides will be there for you:

 

Consider that the white line inside the leaf is a result of the light there, not a great consistent line I painted. You can see that my green is not perfectly even, but it will settle and look more even. If not, you can use a second coat of this, carefully. After that, just apply your preferred top coat and enjoy not paying your debt to a particular tanuki.

I personally do not play Animal Crossing at the moment but I have had a big, and I mean, big phase of playing Animal Crossing for hours and hours every single day. I am one that gets very involved and focuses too much on things, which worked at the time but after several months, I just felt like I had everything how I wanted it and my brain didn't like just visiting my town for just a few minutes a day.

I would like to pay homage to other things like Pokémon, but honestly, my lack of other shades of nail polish make it difficult to paint a pokéball, as I don't have red. If you have any suggestion feel completely free to drop it below! And thanks for reading! I have my nails prepared for at least a couple of weeks, which will take a lot of weight off of me, expect them!