DIY Nail Art – Best Nail Designs and Trends

Freshly painted nails are one of life’s little pleasures. If you like to change up the look and color of your talons frequently, though, visits to a nail salon can add up quickly. Instead of shelling out to a nail tech for a cute design, try some of these fun, at-home DIY nail art tricks that will have your friends oohing and ahhing over your hands. Remember that the key to a great manicure is a quality top coat to seal and protect your polish.

Bonjour!

Giving yourself a French-inspired manicure is easy with either tape (if you have square shaped nails) or hole punch reinforcing stickers (if you have round or oval shaped nails).

Paint your main color over your whole nail and let it dry completely. Now lay down tape or stickers as guides to get the perfect line or curve at the tip of your nails without making a mess!

Moon-Gazer

The half-moon mani is the French manicure’s edgy cousin, with crescents or half-circles of a contrasting color at the base of the nail, near the cuticle.

Paint your whole nail in the accent color (which will be the half moon when you’re done) and, when it’s totally dry, apply a hole-reinforcing sticker to form the shape of the half-moon.

Paint above that sticker only for the half-moon look.

Fierce Angles

Using the taping method described above, divide the nail in half at an angle and paint a contrasting shade over your dry base coat for a fun two-tone look.

With some creativity and patience (remember, your polish must be completely dry before putting down any tape) you can even have three or four different color stripes or triangles on your nails.

Hello, Sailor!

The Nautical look is in so pain your nails with a navy or dark blue base coat. Scotch tape is the DIY nail diva’s best friend, so paint a few inches of some tape with white polish and let it dry, too.

Now cut the painted tape into thin strips (18 or smaller) and lay them horizontally over your nails, using tweezers for a delicate touch. For a fun accent nail, you can try and freehand paint an anchor on one nail or the silhouette of a sailboat.

Everybody Polka

Dots are an easy and fun way to play with colors! You can even use the rounded tip of a bobby pin if you don’t want to buy a dotting tool.

Once your base coat is dry, apply dots of another color or colors for a cute look.

Blooming

Using those same dots and bobby pin dotting tool, you can form simple flowers on your nails.

One color dot in the middle and 4 or 5 petals on the outside make a cute flower.

Sparkling

Paint a base coat of a plain color.

Once that’s dry, add a coat or two of a glitter polish around the cuticles that becomes less dense toward the tips of your nails for a quick glitter gradient look!