DIY Nail Art Book Review

Hey guys,

I've got a nail art book to review for you today. I bought this book in the new year, and I can't believe it's taken me all these months to write about it.

The book is called DIY Nail Art by Catherine Rodgers, who, according to the blurb, is the creator of a 'popular' nail art Youtube channel called Totally Cool Nails. I'd never heard of the channel before purchasing this book, but perhaps some of you are familiar with it. She's a self-taught nail art designer, who lives in Dawsonville, Georgia.

DIY Nail Art is a nail art tutorial book and is filled with 75 creative nail art designs, each with a step by step tutorial to help you through every step of the design so you can recreate them at home.

It also provides advice for preparing and taking care of your nails, along with tips and techniques, which tools to use, and instructions on how to use the book. It's a softback book with 159 pages.

The tutorials are so easy to follow. Firstly, you're provided with a colour photo of the nail art design, so you know what you're trying to create; crucial for success, I'd say! Each tutorial is printed on white pages, which makes everything easy to see, and read. And, there's also a colour photo for each stage of the design, complete with concise and clear instructions. 

It's refreshing to follow clear instructions, instead of ones which make you feel like you're trying to decipher a foreign language from another world. I wish all instructions were this easy!

Most of the tutorials take up a double page spread, like the one shown above...

... while others are on a single page, like the Zig Zag nail tutorial above.

The book features a great selection of fashionable, colourful designs to recreate, including classics like polka dots, stripes, animal prints, and florals; fashionable galaxy print; cute animals like ladybirds and penguins; fruits; and even designs for holidays like Christmas and Halloween. 

Here are some of my favourites: (Apologies for the quality of the photos, they proved hard to capture well without a scanner).

There are such a great mix of designs to try, and I just want to keep coming back to this book to try another look or try one again. I've had a go at several, and the ladybird design is definitely my favourite so far. I'm most looking forward to trying the tiger print and zebra print nails next.

While I like to attempt nail art, I'm a complete novice, and I have to say this book is easy enough for a beginner to follow, and the designs are achievable for anyone who has a bit of patience and a steady hand. If you're a nail art pro, you'll probably have tried your hand at many similar designs- a lot are similar to what can be found on Pinterest- but there are sure to be a few in here you've not seen before.

This book has something for every taste and occasion and would no doubt appeal to nail art fans from tweens, to teens and twenty-somethings and beyond. I do think some of the designs are quite 'young', but they're bound to appeal to the young at heart, too!

It retails for £10.99, but I bought it on Amazon for around £6 or £7. It's currently £7.69, and can also be bought for the Kindle. It's very well priced for the amount of tutorials it's filled with, and I recommend it for any nail art enthusiast, whether you're a beginner or a bit more experienced! You won't be disappointed.

I certainly wasn't!