I went with grey and white for simple elegance, and that modern playful look.
I took pics right after doing my nails, so if there's any paint on the edges of my fingers it's because I hadn't bothered to wash it off first.
For this design you're going to need:
- Clean nails
- White nail polish
- Grey nail polish
- Opaque tape
- Scissors
- A tooth pick, or dot applicator
- A piece of nonabsorbent material (I like to use a small ziplock bag because plastic works the best and it's cheap and disposable)
- Optional Q-Tip and nail polish remover to clean up the edges of your fingers and finish it off with a clean, professional look (showering will also take off excess nail polish- on your skin- after your nails have dried. That's a trick I use all the time)
The colors I used today:
- Snow me white by Sinful Colors
- A whitened grey by Covergirl (couldn't find it online so I can't link it- I bought it back when having grey nails was in style)
Yes there is a finger print of grey on the top of my bottle. I use my nail polishes frequently so unfortunately most of them aren't very pretty looking as I work with messy hands quite often. Sorry it wasn't prepped and photo-ready.
- Paint all of your nails except for your ring fingers white
- Paint your ring fingers grey
- Allow polish to dry COMPLETELY (I actually waited an entire day, and just enjoyed plain nails yesterday before coming back to decorate them today)
- Cut the opaque tape into small slivers and place on grey ring finger nails forming arrows that look like they're point upward. If you're confused there's a picture below. Make sure to press the tape into the creases of the side of your nails so your top coat of polish won't get under the tape
- Gently dab (dot) white nail polish into the non-tape-covered areas on your ring fingers. I find that if you paint over the nail like normal it tends to morph the shape too much when I remove the tape, and I like cleaner lines.
- Gently peel the tape off while polish is still wet. Move slowly, and from the outside of your nail (on your skin) to the inside, pulling upward and away from the start. Try to maintain the shape that the tape should've created.
- When all tape is removed, allow those nails to dry
- Place a small dot of the grey nail polish on your plastic bag or nonabsorbent material of choice
- Dip your toothpick or nail dot creator utensil into the grey polish dot, gathering enough polish on the tip so that you won't have to touch the toothpick to your nail to create a dot. (if your toothpick touches your nail it will create a less desirable dot. I find that it's best to get a ball of paint on your toothpick and lightly touch it to the nail so that the pointy part of the toothpick doesn't end up in contact with your nail. This will give you a more professional and clean look)
- Place dots evenly throughout nail, in an every-other-place staggered fashion (see picture if you're confused). This will give your polka dots consistency and the appearance of a professional manicure or even stick-on manicure. Basically it just makes you look like you know what you're doing if your dots are perfectly spaced rather than randomly done.
- Allow to dry completely. Optional top coat (I didn't use a base or top coat today)
Plain nail polish
This is how your tape should look
Carefully dot the white onto the visible grey parts, doing your best to avoid the tape
This is the dot applicator I use. I have like 4 or 5, and each one has 2 different sized ends, so I have 8 or 10 different sizes of applicators. I do my nails A LOT. You can use a toothpick and it'll look the same. I did nails with no fancy tools for YEARS (until 7 months ago), so I don't want people to think that they need fancy nail polish or fancy nail brushes/dot tools to have perfect nails.
And this is the finished product!
