How to Draw Nail Polish Designs

You painted your nails a nice solid color, but do you ever think it could use a little more? You can be creative and add some designs to your nails, ones that aren't too hard but require some steady work.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Nail Polish colors of your choice
• Already painted nails (if you wish)
• Toothpicks
• Nail Polish Remover
• Patience

1. First, decide what you'd like to put on there. Popular and not too difficult designs are flowers, polka dots, stripes, and squiggles. Get some paper and do a practice design to make sure it will come out the way that you want it to.
2. Depending on your design, you may or may not need toothpicks. For example, if you want to do stripes, the toothpick will make them come out thinner. If you want to do flowers, you can just use the end of the nail polish brush.
3. After the solid coat on your nails is dry is when you should do the designs, to be on the safe side. Some people only do their middle fingers for designs and others do more or all of them. As an example, let's use the flower design to get started.
4. For a flower, dab a dot in the middle of each nail you wish to design and wait for them to dry. Using your other color of choice, carefully make more dabs around the middle circle. If you mess up, you may dip the brush back in the polish to add a little more. Don't do too much or it will spill across your nail. If you do use too much, wipe some of it away right away before it dries too much or ruins your nail. Once these dry you can use the toothpick to add leaves or other designs.
5. Polka dots are simple, and these you can just dab with the brush. Thicker stripes can be done this way too using the brush.
6. If you want to use the toothpick for anything, take the brush and paint the end very lightly. You want to make sure you put a good amount on there that is not too much. Using the toothpick to paint anything requires a lot of care and patience. Make sure it is something that can be abstract, such as squiggles, etc. If you choose something to begin with that is too complex, it will be too difficult to do and you won't have the result you want.
7. Whatver design you do, you should wait for it to dry completely, then add a top coat. This keeps the design in place and gives your nail a smoother look.

Tips & Warnings

• Did you mess up? Wiping it away quickly with a napkin end or your finger right away will take care of it. Did it smear over your nail completely? You sometimes will have to add the solid color back on to patch up spots.
• Did you smear the solid color on your nail before it dried? This may sound weird, but stick your tongue out and smooth it out that way. Your tongue has no prints and your finger does, and if you used your finger it would leave behind prints. No, the nail polish will not stick to your tongue and eat it.
• The older your nail polish, the more complicating it becomes to work with it. Old nail polish becomes clunky and chunky. Pour A LITTLE nail polish remover in it and shake it up. This will get some of it off the bottle walls and into the mix. If the color is very very old but you only need a little bit, get out what you can with a toothpick. Remember the chunkier the harder it is to paint.