The Hunt Mani Monday - Gem Nail Art Tutorial

Hi all! Happy Monday! I'm very excited to share that I'm going to be partnering with the lovely folks over at The Hunt for the next few months do do a Mani Monday tutorial each week! They have recently done a soft launch of their blog, with a full launch coming next week, and you can see all my future looks over there soon :) You can also easily browse their iPhone app to post and find hunts, as well as just browse for general inspiration. 

To get things started with them, I decided to do a tutorial inspired by The Hunt logo! It's a really cool looking gem in varying shades of reds and I thought it would look fantastic translated into nail art form. This is definitely a trickier mani, but if you've got the patience and the tools, it's definitely doable for anyone. If painting this on all your nails seems daunting, try doing an accent nail instead - and don't be afraid to mix up the color scheme :) 

Note: This look requires 8 shades of the same color. If you're not a polish collector like me, you can easily achieve different shades by adding an increasing amount of white polish to your original color (i.e. darkest=no white, midtone=4 drops of white, lightest=white).

1. Paint your nails with a black polish and let dry completely. 

2a. Paint a white plus symbol in the center of your nail. 

2b. Connect the ends of the plus symbol to create a diamond. 

3a. Fill in the diamond shape with white and let dry.  

3b. Refer to the layout shown in this step as your key for filling in the colors in the following steps. 

4. With your darkest red polish, paint a triangle in the "1" spot of the diamond.

5. With your a slightly lighter shade of red, paint a triangle in the "2" spot of the diamond. 

6. Use another, slightly lighter red to paint the "3" spot. 

7. Use a midtoned red in the "4" spot. 

8. Paint your 4th lightest shade of red in the "5" spot. I transitioned to coral colors at this point to show more shading. 

9. Use a dark pink in the "6" spot. 

10. Paint a light pink in the "7" triangle location. 

11. And finally, in the "8" spot, paint a crisp white triangle! If you outside edges aren't as crisp as you'd like, take some black polish and outline the edges of the diamonds. Finish with your favorite top coat and enjoy! 

Stay tuned for more Mani Monday posts and be sure to check out The Hunt on their blog, Facebook and Instagram!

Happy Polishing :)