Polka Dottin'

This is officially my first nail art tutorial! HOORAH HOORAH!

The polka dot was chosen because it is basically the gate way drug involving the dotting tool to all nail art from here!

What you will need:

1. Base coat

2. Two different nail polish colors (colors chosen for this tutorial are China Glaze: For Audrey and OPI: Fly)

3. Dotting tools (a set of 5 purchased on eBay for about $2.00 with FREE shipping. Toothpicks, pin heads on pencil tops, bobby pins can also do the job but I chose to purchase a set as an investment rather than using multiple toothpicks and bobby pins in the long run) 

4. Top coat (Recommend: Seche Vite dry fast top coat. It works. To the point I gift them to every girl I know. Especially when you think your nails are dry and go to bed only to wake up with sheet marks in them. One of my friends told me she sleeps like Count Dracula because of that problem, gifted Seche Vite!)

5. Old CD and a paper towel as your fancy artistic pallet

I personally remove my previous nail polish before taking a shower because that way it cleanses all the residual nail polish and the chemical feeling of the remover. It also preps and softens your cuticles for trimming.

Note: do not push and trim your cuticles EVERY TIME you do your nails because over trimming will toughen the skin around the nail beds creating a tougher cuticle resulting in DUN DUN DUN ... MAN HAND FINGERS!

Remember to always, always, I cannot emphasize enough times ... ALWAYS use a base coat. Not only does it bond the polish better to your nail making it last longer it also acts as a buffer from staining your nails yellow, red, black or which ever color you previously rocked. It also makes sparkly nail polish easier to remove in my opinion.

After applying your base coat and letting it dry, apply the base color of which ever your heart fancies. Then drip one drop of the secondary color onto the CD. Time to dip and dot!!!

I like to dip before each dot that way the pigment of each dot is the same and not running low by the 3rd dot. If the polish starts to get tacky or gloppy and you notice the dot is getting larger because the polish is drying on the tool, its time to swipe and clean with the paper towel. 

Start from left to right and top to bottom. (Please love my paint schematics lol) Notice the column of dots are one imaginary dot apart from each other, this is to create a "window" affect like movie theater seating for the next column of dots.

Wait until all the dots are completely dry before applying the top coat to prevent dragging marks from the dots.

O snap WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?! epic nails is what you did!

Tip: if you cannot paint within the lines even if your life depended on it like me, cheat. There are nail polish corrector pens everywhere but after a while they get kind of gross like this.

So a trick I learned is toothpick and some cotton = precision minus the permanent grossness. Get a tiny amount of cotton and a pointed end tooth pick and roll the tip of the toothpick into the cotton until it looks like this. Then dip the cotton covered tooth pick into nail polish remover and erase what you gotta erase!