Valentine's Day Nail Art - Dainty Lovelies Tutorial

There's no better time to go all out with nail art than Valentine's Day. Flowers are nice but polish is always better (especially when pampering yourself with festive designs!). Now's the time to be creative, mix and match, and design nail art around the 'love' theme - there are many ways of conjuring up Valentine's Day inspiration through polish. For this design, I wanted to have a dainty pattern that included florals, candy stripes, delicate lace, and of course, hearts.  I have included a tutorial below for the floral design since you could create an entirely cute manicure out of that pattern alone.

For this Valentine's Day manicure, I used Sally Hansen's newly released I Heart Nail Art nail art tools, such as the Stripers and Nail Art Pens, because the products were easy to use and allowed for precision. The Sally Hansen Striper formula is highly pigmented, opaque and in a rich red shade; the brush on the striper is a perfect medium length (not too long - that can be more cumbersome than helpful).  The I Heart Nail Art pens come in a variety of fun colors, and the packaging is sleek and comfortable to use.

The fine tip of the pens is quite precise and the formula is fluid and opaque - I've really been loving these for the hearts design! The newly released pens are of a higher quality than in the past and are affordable alternatives for nail art beginners or pros. Because Sally Hansen must have known our love of nail art, Sally Hansen also recently released nail art tools collections and polishes designed specifically for perfecting the art of pretty nails.

I used the following products (c/o): I Heart Nail Art Pen Green, I Heart Nail Art Striper Red, Xtreme Wear Polish Bubblegum Pink, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pink Blink, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear White On.
1.  Apply base polish on your nails.
2.  Using a light pink, paint three large dots at random.
3.  Grab your dotting tool and apply 5 smaller dots around the circumference of the large dots you previously painted (this will create a 'lacey' effect).
4.  For the roses, dot three small dots of your darker pink inside the larger dots from Step 3 in order to imitate flower buds.  Using the red striper polish delineate petals - the petals design does not have to be exact but try to emulate the round shape of a rose.
5. Add small leaves to the roses by using a green polish.  I recommend two leaves per rose pair as to not crowd the design.
6.  Using your dotting tool, apply smaller white dots randomly throughout to create depth and dimension.
7.  Apply a top coat and repeat as you wish!

I hope all of your have a lovely Happy Valentine's Day! Let me know in the comments what you plan on doing for Valentine's Day - I'm inspired for my nail art but now need some actual events to show off this cute manicure!