While perusing the beauty aisle at a local drugstore the other day, I noticed a little polka-dot nail kit. It consisted of two small bottles of polish, and a nail dotting tool. I had no idea such a tool existed, but I immediately wanted to figure out how to make my own. So I went home and did a little bit of internet searching and came across this idea from The Beauty Department. All you need to make your own dotting tool is a sewing pin, and a pencil. That’s it. It’s super simple. You could even do it without the pencil, which is really just a handle.

To give your nails a fancy polka-dot manicure, here’s what you’ll need:
Two colors of nail polish
A pin
A pencil
A piece of scrap paper
Optional: A basecoat and topcoat of nail polish

Paint your nails with your base color.


Stick the pin into the eraser of the pencil. It doesn’t have to be straight, but it helps.

Put a small blob of polish on the scrap paper, and dip the pin dotting tool into it. Practice daubing dots onto the scrap paper.

After you feel like you’ve got the hang of it, start dotting your nails. If the pin gets too much polish on it, wipe it on the paper. Use a light touch–it’s easier to enlarge a dot than make it smaller.

Let it dry, and you’re done! Fun, right?

Oh, and here’s another manicure tip I tried out for this project. I read recently that to keep the skin around your nails clear of polish, you can brush Vaseline around the nail bed before you paint them. It’s supposed to keep the polish from sticking to your skin. I tried this with coconut oil instead of Vaseline, and I think it worked pretty well! There was still a bit of nail polish on the skin around my nails, but not as much as usual.

Happy dotting!