After a month of Christmas nails, it was time to switch it up. My instinct to keep things interesting when I am out of ideas is to throw glitter on my nails. It’s a great solution, and I have some awesome glitters that keep things fresh. However, even that can get boring, especially when you’re used to whipping out all your nail art tools and multiple colors.
Then I saw The Dainty Squid’s most recent weekly nail and knew that a mix&match mani would be the perfect solution!
Kaylah’s inspiration came from here, which also came from here.
All three of these used scotch tape nail decals, something I have yet to try.
But their use of colors and different shapes inspired me to play around on my own.
Here was the result:
For these nails, I used 7 different polishes. Polka dots are super simple so I loved doing the border nails with varying color dots. I kept it simple on the ring finger with a line of alternating black and white dots.
Butttttt, my favorite nail is my pinky nail!
The pinky nail is super easy to do and it’s why I wanted to share a little tutorial with you guys!
The design itself reminds me of several crayons that melted near each other into a puddle and, since it’s near the tip of the nail, it’s a fun alternative to the classic (but sometimes stuffy) French manicure!
The good thing about these nails are that they are completely customizable. I like the multi-colored look (with a gray or beige to offset the brights), but I think this would be great with different shades of the same color or even a darker, monochromatic look with blacks and whites and silvers and grays.
I also chose to play with negative space, using just the base coat instead of putting down a solid color on the entire nail.
You can do that if you choose. If you feel more comfortable, you can use a sheer pink or off-white like a a basic manicure, or you can have some fun and use a crazy color of cream polish as the base!
I used a nail art wheel to show this since I didn’t want to take off my nail polish.
These are the colors I chose to use, sandwiched between a base coat and top coat. Both are essential items for any good at-home manicure. I’ll get into detail with that another time. I chose 4 bright and fun colors with a great creamy gray as a nice neutral anchor for the rest.
Grab whichever bottle you’d like to start with. Remove a good amount of polish off of the brush, but make sure you still have a nice dot left over. You don’t want to make a thick, hard to dry drop.
Making sure to keep your dots near the tip of the nail, lightly tap the brush onto the nail. It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle. Start small and you can add a bit more if you’d like to make a bigger dot or your nails are longer.
Yes, this dot is a bit thicker, but I recommend doing it on each nail in one color at a time (all ten gray, all ten blue, etc.). By the time you get back to that nail, it will have dried a teensy bit so that the colors won’t run together too much.
Continue making dots. The colors will spread a bit, especially as you get closer to the nail. Feel free to go back with past colors if they get covered with new ones, and to make sure the tips get covered with the colors closest to the edge.
The finished product!
It’s not going to look “perfect” because it isn’t. Each will have it’s own unique flow, mix and mesh of colors.
To smooth everything out, use a top coat!
I hope you enjoy the look!
If you want to see another nail art tutorial I’ve done, you can check out this post.
