Nail Art Designs

Perfect Polka Dots

When creating polka dots nail art, I used to have this ‘I’ve ruined my nails!!’ agony because of my shaky hands and uneven dots. Then one day, I kind of found this method to create (nearly) perfect dots. I will show you how to create dotted nails in three different ways, and hopefully, by the end of this tutorial, you will find it much easier to tackle dotted nails :)

1) Creating dots with toothpick

1) After painting your nails with the base colour, place a few drops of polish for dots on a piece of paper (I’m using parchment paper). Take a small amount of polish with a toothpick.

2) Place the toothpick and make 2 – 4 dots vertically at the centre of your nail. The spacing of the dots here determines how dense your dots will be; the more dots you create at the centre, the denser your dots will be.

3) The next step, place dots in a way that each dots form a triangle shape (if you draw lines, that is). For example, 1 and 2 (the dots you drew at step 2) and 3 (the new dot) form a triangle, and 1, 2 and 4 (the new dot) form a triangle.

4) Add dots in the same principle, making the dots to form triangles.

5) See? It’s not perfect-perfect, but it’s pretty neat, no?

2) Creating dots with cotton buds (Q-Tips)

a) After painting your nails with the base colour, place a few drops of polish for dots on a piece of paper (I’m using parchment paper). Take a small amount of polish with a cotton bud.

b) Place the cotton bud to make dots in the same way as the step2 – 4above, but apply the dots while the base polish is still wet. Since cotton buds will create bigger dots, if you apply dots on dry polish there is a chance that you’ll get uneven circles. Applied on wet polish, though, each dot will be more circle-shaped (hope this makes any sense!).

3) Creating dots with glitters

i) After painting your nails with the base colour, place some glitters on a piece of paper. Apply a tiny amount of topcoat or water on the tip of a toothpick, and take one glitter.

This is the glitter I’m using. I got it from a craft shop (for about £1), and there are so many different colours!

ii) Apply the glitter on your nails in the same way as step2 – 4 above. Your nails should be wet with polish; if the base polish is dried already, apply a topcoat before placing the glitters.

iii) Apply one coat of topcoat after placing the glitters.

My favourite way of creating polka dots is the one using glitters, because it is the quickest way for me (drying time is much shorter), and I don’t have to worry about making same size dots over and over again. Also, you can replace glitters with rhinestones which would add another dimension to your nail art.

Here are some examples:

I created polka dots with rhinestones and pearls.

For this one, I created dots with glitters first, and then added some rhinestones.

I usually don’t wear polka dots on every nail (they can look very ‘loud’). But polka dots on moon nails didn’t look that ‘dotty dotty’.

So, are you feeling less stressed about creating dotted nails now? The rule is; 1) relax, 2) think ‘triangle’ and 3) use rhinestones or glitters for perfection.