Bumblebee Nails

I did these bumble bee nails for a friend to match her Halloween costume. Most of the fingers were very simple stripes, but the thumbs have shiny insect wings.

1. I started off with a base coat to keep her nails from being stained by the colored nail polish.
2. Then I applied a coat of white polish. My yellow nail polish was sheer, so I needed a white background to let it show through.
3. I applied a coat of yellow polish to get the bee’s color.
4. Then I switched over to acrylic paints and very small paint brushes to do the bee’s stripes.
5. I used full strength black paint to do the stripes, eyeballing their width and trying to keep them level.
6. On the thumbs, I left a bigger last stripe to look like the bee’s head.
7. Then I did two coats of a pearly white polish in the shape of wings. While it was still dry, I attached craft glitters throughout the wings. They really made the wings look dimensional and realistic.

I dabbed over the glitters with clear nail polish to hold them in place. When they were completely dry, I covered all of her nails in a top coat with a hardener. I chose to only do stripes and not full bees on most of her nails because they were so short. Their round shape added to the bee style.