13 Fresh Nail Designs You Can Totally Pull Off On Your Own

Want to dress up your tips and rock some seriously cool nails? Not all nail art requires a wad of cash, three hours of free time, or an art degree! Here are 13 simple and stylish designs that you can tackle from the comfort of your own home. 

1. Interlocking Dots

All Lacquered Up created this bright and summery dotticure by painting her nails alternating shades of blue and green, adding diagonal color blocking at the tips, and using a dotting tool to swap coordinating dots on top.

2. Sweet and Girly Glitter Gradient

This glitter gradient from The Dalai Lama’s Nails is stunning in its simplicity. To get the look, use a triangle makeup wedge to sponge silver glitter over a pink base, concentrating it at the tips.

3. Dreamy Watercolor

The PolishAholic painted layers of sheer nail polish over a white base to create this soft, watercolored effect. The more free-form your shapes are, the better!

4. Juicy Dots

Not all dots are created equal! Place rows of dots in different sizes and colors like FashionPolish did. Don’t have a nail art dotting tool? Try the back of a paintbrush handle, a toothpick, or the head of a sewing pin.

5. Ninja Nails

Feeling sneaky? Try this cute ninja nail art from Cosmetics Aficionado! Paint your nails with red and black, then use a toothpick to add the face and headband details. You can even mix things up by adding a throwing star accent nail!

6. Elegant Leopard Print

Work/Play/Polish mixed classy and sassy by combining elegant colors with fierce leopard print. Start by painting random splotches of pink on a shimmery white base. Then, use a toothpick to add freeform leopard markings around the pink. Finish off the look by filling in any empty spaces with small dots.

7. Pink Lemonade Splatter

Sometimes it can be fun to get a little messy with your nails. Love. Varnish, chocolate and more… created this look by dipping small straws into three shades of polish, and then blowing them onto her nails. TIP: Stick tape on the areas surrounding your nails to protect them from the mess, and clean up using a cotton swab dipped in polish remover.

8. Gumdrop Dotticure

Textured polishes are game for nail art, too! Will Paint Nails For Food mixed solid nails with textured dots for a candy-licious combo.

9. Citrus Clouds

Let Them Have Polish chose sunny yellow, sweet peach, and vivid orange for her cloud manicure. To get this look, use the polish brush to stack steps of color over your base.

10. Neon Hatchmarks

Channel ’80s vibes with this vibrant neon manicure! A Girl and Her Polish used a striper brush to add random dashes of color, but you could also use a toothpick. Make sure to use a white base to enhance the neons!

11. Punky Distressed Nails

Get grungy and try out my distressed manicure! Add swipes of color to a white base by wiping almost all of the polish off of the brush and lightly dragging it down the length of your nail. Finish off the look with black for nail art that pops!

12. Dots in a Line

Beauty by Miss L chose a jewel-toned palette for her dotticure, and arranged the colors into two different nail styles. Place your dots in a line for a perfectly mod mani!

13. Syrup Gradient

Polish Insomniac created this easy syrup gradient manicure by stacking consecutively shorter layers of a sheer nail polish. Choose a jelly nail polish with glitter for a bit of extra glam!