Nail Art Tutorial: The Mermaid Manicure

Posted by Alexandra C. | Friday July 13, 201228 comments


As a child (and, I'll admit it, full grown adult), my favourite princess was Ariel from The Little Mermaid. I love the idea of a beautiful sea siren with her flowing locks and beautiful jewel tone fish scales. Now that it's summer and I'm all about hitting the beach, I've been inspired by my favourite princess to bring you a mani fit for a mermaid! 

We first came across the fish scale technique on this blog and we loved the idea of easily creating it by just using your handy dandy dotting tool. It's definitely a good idea to play around with the colours on this mani too. We thought it was only appropriate to use aquas, teals and blues for an underwater theme. Even glitter polishes, brights and neons could be just as gorgeous. 

Using this technique and style, we came up with a pretty snazzy (if we do say so ourselves) and simple manicure.
 

We'll be dotting to create an accent nail on the ring finger then dotting on every other nail to create a french tip of scales. Here are some close ups of the nail art. 

How's how we did it: 


Tip: For the 'scale' look, you'll want to overlap the dots, not place on top of each other. Don't stick with a pattern either, go for a more natural and aquatic look with random colour selection. Also, we suggest using a quick dry top coat with this manicure. 

For this manicure we used:

Dotting Tool 
Zoya Nail Polish in Reagan (Base) 
Maybelline Color Show Nail Polish in Styled Out and Navy Narcissist 
Essie Polish in Cocktail Bling and Bobbing for Baubles
Butter London 3 Free Nail Lacquer in Artful Dodger 
Quo by Orly Nail Polish in Tuquoise Moonlight 
Joe Fresh Nail Polish in Fluo Blue 
Sephora O.P.I. Polish in What’s With The Cattitude?



What do you think of our nail art? Is this something you would try?
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24 Comments

on July 16, 2012  luxx  2,176 said:

I love this! So pretty.

on July 15, 2012  torontogirl84  2,271 said:

I love your manicure! You've just inspired me to do a manicure like yours :)

on July 14, 2012  katieg  10,672 said:


It looks like something that would take a lot of time to do. Sunday afternoon; maybe.

on July 14, 2012  FranP  1,071 said:

I love this design. Definitely going to try it.

on July 14, 2012  LeanneRenouf  4,337 said:

Very pretty :)

on July 14, 2012  KatelynRose1984  20,704 said:

Great manicure! Personally, I like the tips much better than covering the entire nail. It's such a creative idea, and doesn't seem extremely hard to do. Maybe I'll attempt this in the near future? We'll see!

on July 14, 2012  bubbles77  28,057 said:

Very cool !! Looks neat, seems easy enough.Once again very creative !!

on July 13, 2012  Cassie_  2,311 said:

I like that! I need to get better nail polishes soon to do cute things like this!

on July 13, 2012  beachbabe  4,164 said:

So cool!

on July 13, 2012  Bren  26,031 said:

I love how this looks on the tip of the nail very pretty!

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