Melting Ice Cream nails tutorial

Today we're going to work on nails that look like ice cream. I think this particular iteration could look amazing on pointed nails, so something along the lines of an almond or an stiletto, to give it the full shape of an ice cream cone, but it is readable anyways:

 

This might have been partially inspired by AiScReam's single, but if you are into any kind of japanese music, you might have heard the audio I'm referring to. Mint chocolate is not my top 1 flavour but it is green and you know the rules in this blog. Let's see what do you need for this:

My three polishes are really inexpensive drugstore ones, you will need three base shades: a tan to make the cone, a darker shade to make the cross pattern of it, and then, your favourite flavour! Or you can make a skittle of different flavours on each nail, that would look really cute. My polishes are exactly:

• PS... Gel Effect 's Barely There
• Kiko's 321
• Deliplus Gel Effect' Nº137

Let's start with the foundation of your ice cream, the cone that will hold it: paint your tan to opacity, it took me two coats as the first one was a bit uneven:

Then here's where the magic begins. Grab a striping brush and start painting lines with your darker brown. You want to make parallel lines in a diagonal direction, but don't sweat it too much if they're not perfect. After that, do them in the opposite diagonal direction, to get a crossed pattern. You don't need to reach the top of the nail, you can stop at the height your cone is gone to be, you do want ice cream after all. To top it off, you can do a thicker line across your nail with that shade. This line doesn't have to be perfect at all, as you're gonna cover parts of it with your melting ice cream:

Time to add your favourite flavour. I will fill the space above with my mint colour. With help of a small brush, I will also extend drops below that line we established to make the melting part. If you need to add more coats, feel free to do so until you reach an opaque result. Don't be afraid of going further down if you want a truly melted look, or barely touch the first line for a recently served ice cream, to your taste:

 

And this is basically the whole technique. Depending on your kind of ice cream, you might want to add more details or not. A vanilla ice cream might be just a pastel yellow but if you want to go for a neapolitan ice cream you can just play around with your three colours and drops. Straciatella or cookies and cream can replicate the effect with flakies. Or you can add small red dots on your pink strawberry ice cream if you want a more "natural ice cream" look instead of a fully processed plain look! I added brown irregular shapes of the darker brown using a small brush because it's chocolate mint, not just mint:

 

Wait for your coats to dry before applying a top coat or your treat will smear beyond recognition and edibility, and that's it! Today seems to be the first day of a heat wave where I live, another one, yes, so you can bet I had an ice cream after this tutorial. That's also why my linework was worse than usual, I could not turn off the fan while doing that so my polish clumped way faster. But the ice cream is not about being perfect for instagram, but about it being delicious, and I think I achieved this.

I hope you put many flavours and try toppers and techniques to make it your own! Do you have any fav ice cream? I said chocolate mint is not my actual fave, that title would go to turrón. It's a nutty Christmas treat typical of Spain but you can find things with its flavour a bit more year round. And the temperature and texture of ice cream makes me appreciate it even more, I can't have enough!