6 Stellar DIY Nail Art Designs in Only Three Steps

nail art

Easy DIY nail art to jazz up your digits.

Painting your nails all one color? Pffft! While nail art is all the rage, I always lean toward DIY nail art as opposed to going to a salon. One, because it saves oodles of money, and two, because I don’t want toxic chemicals on my tips.

Below are 6 fabulous DIY nail art designs and suggested non-toxic nail polishes to go with them:

glitter ombre nail art
Tutorial + Image Source: Dit&O

1. Glitter Ombre

  • Paint your base color on all of your nails.
  • Paint your glitter overcoat, making sure it’s heavier toward the base of your nail and lighter toward the tip.
  • Once the ombre effect is how you like it, apply a top coat.

Colors to Try:

undone manicure nail art
Tutorial + Image Source: Love, Blair

2. The Undone Manicure

  • Paint your lighter base color on all of your nails.
  • To paint the complimenting darker shade, place the brush on the outer edges of each nail and quickly sweep inward, repeating all the way to the tip.
  • Apply a top coat.

Colors to Try:

gradient manicure
Tutorial + Image Source: LuLu’s

3. Pink Gradient

  • Paint your thumbnails with a deep pink nail polish.
  • Pour four puddles of pink polish. Add one drop of white polish to the first, two to the second, three to the third, and four to the fourth.
  • Paint each nail from darkest to lightest for the gradient effect, finishing with a top coat.

Colors to Try:

asymmetrical crescent nail art
Tutorial + Image Source: Lulu’s

4. Black and White Asymmetrical Crescent

  • Paint your white base coat.
  • Carefully paint a curved line to define the black area.
  • Fill in with black nail polish and finish with a top coat.

Colors to Try:

yellow-and-blue nail art
Tutorial + Image Source: POPSUGAR

5. Yellow-and-Blue Nail Art

  • Apply yellow nail polish to every finger but your ring fingers.
  • Apply blue nail polish to your ring fingers.
  • Dip the tip of a bobby pin into your white nail polish and apply dots to your ring fingers, finishing off the look with a top coat.

Colors to Try:

stippling diy nail art
Tutorial + Image Source: Quite Polished

6. Stippling DIY Nail Art

  • Paint your nails with your preferred base coat (or mix and match several colors).
  • Using a toothpick, create dots on the tip of your nail (dark if your base coat is light, and vice versa). Create so many you can hardly see the base coat underneath.
  • Keep working down your nail, using fewer dots as you move your way to your cuticles, finishing off with a top coat.

Colors to Try:

What are your favorite DIY nail art designs?

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Image: Courtney Rhodes

Krissy Brady

Krissy Brady is a women’s health + lifestyle writer who’s so out of shape, it’s like she has the innards of an 80-year-old. Instead of learning how to crochet, she decided to turn her emotional baggage into a writing career (genius, no?). You can follow her shenanigans on Twitter (you know, if you want).