Lucky Clover Field nails tutorial

Spring is getting closer and closer, but we're still not there. But you know what's closer and is way on brand with me? Saint Patrick's day! You cannot give me a day in which you're expected to go all out on green and pretend I'll act normal! I don't truly partake in this celebration, it's not a thing around here, so I don't want to step on anyone's toes. So I'll just take one of the iconic elements that are associated with that festivity but without claiming it on my own, are we okay with that?

But yes, I'm going to be painting clovers today! The base shape looks convoluted but don't worry, as we're gonna go through a failproof method that I've already taught you!

 

I've decided to put a full on field on my nail, and I've also used polishes with a finish that may not be the best for photographing, but I can assure you that in real life they look quite great. So, which are the polishes that caught my eye to do this? I'm glad you asked!

 I've used these three Holo Taco polishes for today's nail:

• Holo Taco's Sour Note
• Holo Taco's Foiled Again
• Holo Taco's Mint Money

I've also used, not pictured, dotting tools and a small detailer brush. And I'm gonna link the most relevant tutorial here: French polka heart nails tutorial. You'll soon understand why!

But first, let's start with the basics: Your base colour, which in my case is Sour Note.

I felt that this shade could replicate a very vibrant field, so that's why I went with it, contrasting with the more cool toned greens that I used for the clovers. And how will the tools I've laid out for you come into play? Well, we're gonna make our clovers using hearts! Let's paint one on our nail with that same technique of the other tutorial:

 

How to proceed from here? Let's draw more hearts, making the points either connected or, my personal preference, point at each other with a tiny gap in the middle. I'm not going for a realistic look whatsoever, so that depiction suffices. It also doubles, not intentionally, as the logo of a certain infamous website, if that's what you're going after.

You can see that my hearts are not exactly perfect but that's okay for me. That's your clover, you did it! You may choose your size differently if you want. Take into account that these nails are quite large, so in a natural shorter nail that size would totally fill a good chunk of it and you'd like to not add more to it. But we can go for a little bit more of definition and visual interest here. Leave your polish to touch dry, and then, choose a different dotting tool, a different colour, and draw hearts using the same technique. You can layer them until you're satisfied with the effect! I went for three layers, so the outer and inner layer would be the darker forest green, but a line of mint would be visible:

This would be the advanced clover that I would go for if you're looking for clarity. I just wanted to add more to make it a field, and not just a clover. I wanted for this to be the only 4 leaf clover, so for the rest, I will use three hearts per clover, not making them as tightly close together.

For the smallest ones in the middle, I just placed three dots together. Going for more definition would be a fool's errand and nobody looks as closely at our nails. I know. Tragic.

As you can see, I used one of the two metallics to draw those other clovers. I didn't want to take that much attention from the main clover event, honestly. I'd recommend, as always with nail art, to wait as much as you can and float your top coat to avoid smearing your design.

This day I did this nail was a bit of a nightmare, for photography. We had alternating sunny moments with flash rains, so my light got quite inconsistent and it's very difficult to account for that, but getting more specialized equipment feels non-relevant for me at this point. In any case, I'll eventually will want to get all of these tutorials and get a nice light and such and being able to retake all the photos consistently. I might do a post like that as a closing of the year, but I haven't decided yet. Would you be interested in that?

In any case, I am at the verge for next week's tutorial, as I had an idea to make a spring tutorial but I am unsure if I want to use three times in a row a similar topic. I will make it, sooner rather than later, but maybe should I give one or two weeks in between, or go for it directly? Let me know and thanks for reading!