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This is an easy nail art tutorial to glitz up your manicure using stuff you have around the house. Here, I will show you how to create a dinosaur egg design, but you will see it is easy to come up with your own variations!

Tools needed:

-Two nail polish colours that go well together, one as your main base colour and one as an accent.

-Two different sized dotting tools. You can use an old dull pencil, bobby pin, old ballpoint pen, etc.

-Non-porous surface for your paint palette, such as an old yogurt container lid.

-A dappen dish containing some polish remover for clean up. You can use a polish remover cap if you don’t have a dappen dish.

Start with painting your base colour. In this case, I’ve chosen Zoya Zuza from the Surf Collection, perfect for summer! I have also chosen to do an accent nail, which has been popular in nail art for a while. My accent colour is Zoya Rory, also from the Surf Collection. Both these colours have a great foil finish, a great formula and are opaque in one coat. Zoya is toxin free and cruelty free and is known for being one of the longest wearing polishes on the market. I’ve painted two coats and used a quick-drying topcoat to speed up the process. 

Once your base colours are dry, put a small pool of your accent polish on your non-porous surface. 

Dip your larger sized dotting tool into the paint and do two spots in the corner of your nail with the accent colour, diagonal to each other. Then take your smaller dotting tool and dip into the paint to do a row of smaller dots, diagonally as well but alongside the larger dots. 

Repeat with the other nails. Once dry, finish with a quick drying topcoat. I like to use Seche Vite or butter LONDON Hardwear, both of which are cruelty free as well.

Tip:  I dip my dotting tool into the remover-filled dappen dish and wipe on a paper towel to clean it after each nail. This prevents the polish from building up on your dotting tool and thickening too much, getting goopy, bubbly or making a lopsided or uneven spot on your nail.

Hopefully this tutorial inspires you with ideas on what you can do with dotting tools using stuff you already have around the house. You can do your own spot-inspired designs such as a line of dots down the middle of each nail, down the side of the nail, diagonally across, polka dots all over, along the tips in a French manicure variation or even speckled like my Robin’s Egg mani I did for the spring!

To check out Silver’s nail blog, visit www.silverinator.com.