I know polka dots aren’t groundbreaking nail art, but it’s a great go-to when you want to do something cool yet simple, and it’s so easy you can also paint both hands. The key to kicking them up a notch is mixing up all the colors. A bunch.
All you do is paint each nail a different color, then paint the dots in different colors, too. Mix neons and neutrals, go tonal (red and pink, or dark blue and bright blue), and I also say it looks better the less perfectly spaced out the dots are. This took about 20 minutes for hands and feet combined, and I’m super pumped with how they turned out. I even showed them off to a teenage girl at my son’s flag football game.
If you want to give it a shot, here’s an expanded version of the instructions, instead of in a long run on sentence.
Connect the dot nails:
• Grab a bunch of different nail polishes, some bright, some light/pastel, some darker. All polishes I used were from Zoya (whose essential healthy nail kit was just named to Oprah’s favorite things pick for 2025. Wahooo!) – they’re all super opaque, which helped tremendously as well.
• Paint each nail a different color. It’s ok of one is used on the other hand/foot, etc. Let dry.
• Now grab a dotting tool (you can also use a ball point pen or stretched out bobby pin) and a piece of cardboard or coated paper. This is to put paint blobs on so you can make dots.
• Put the color you’re going to use for your dots in a little blob on the paper/cardboard, then dot your dotting tool on that lovely blob, and lightly dot it on your nail. Repeat until you have a cool dotted nail.
• Use different colors for the dots and have soe fun. Be sure to have some dots run off the edges, then go in and clean it up.
• The less perfectly spaced and symmetrical it is, the better it looks. Ok that’s my opinion on all art.
• Let it dry really well then coat with a glossy top coat.
Boom. Simple yet equally as fun nail art, done.
