Acrylic Paint

After reading about a million nail art blogs, I found out that you could use acrylic paint instead of nail polish. As far as I can tell, the advantages are almost endless: First, it's WAY cheaper - you can get a huge container of paint for what one tiny nail polish costs. Second, you can mix your own colors much easier than with polish. If you've ever tried to mix polishes, you know it can sometimes be hard to get them to mesh. Some other reasons that paint is great are that it dries quickly (which means no wait time between coats), if you get it on your skin it comes right off with soap and water, and it can be much more manageable than polish.
During these first attempts, I just  did some ladybug french tips (above) and an ant carrying an apple (below). It took me a while to get used to the paint because I never painted before. When I use polish, I just dot on the color, but with the paint I had to get used to the feeling of holding a brush and how that reacts.
I didn't really start embracing the paint until recently because it was still confusing to me, but I am so glad I stuck with it, now I could hardly live without it.