Dotted chain nails tutorial

Today, we’re going to work with another of those “essential” nail art tools that every single influencer will tell you to have: dotting tools. They are quite a versatile tool to create a wide array of designs. Overlap dots, make concentrical dots, even flick your dots! But what we’re doing today is just learning how to properly make the dots and troubleshoot.

 

Let’s see the materials I’ve used to make this nail:

 

The three polishes are from my local european equivalent of a dollar store, so I won’t expect any of you to even have them, but I’ll list them anyways:

• Misdei #352
• Misdei #203
• Misdei #201

And the tool from today is that specific dotting tool. It came in a cheap pack of five, with new nail art brushes from certain website of Chinese goods. I’m not promoting them, but I will encourage you to try less expensive options to get your hands dirty… or your nails pretty.

Most dotting tools are double sided, because it saves material and you only have to flip them to get another side. They are usually a plastic making the handle with two metal pieces on the extremes, ending in a ball. You dip them into wet nail polish and lightly dab it onto the surface you want a dot on. And that’s it! They’re very simple tools!

Let’s look at our nail and go step by step:

You will want your base coat to look opaque and mostly dry. It took two coats for me, in this particular instance. Then, let’s work on our first row of dots.

You need the dotting tool and a surface to drop a small amount of nail polish. You can use a silicon mat, or a yoghourt lid. I personally work on top of a silicon mat but I don’t purposefully drop dots of polish on it, I just don’t like paying attention at drying time to put away my mat and not mess up anything else. A lid, I can put it away more easily.

Put a bit of polish on your surface, then, dip the dotting tool to that little pool, and put the dot where you want! I personally started placing the dot closer to the nail tip and worked my way through the base area. I’d recommend dipping back again your tool in the polish every dot for consistency, and work fast. If you notice any kind of resistence in the polish, or any string… time to get more fresh polish from the bottle. You’ll thank me later, believe me.

The same procedure was executed for the second colour of dots. I just used a small tool. Be mindful that I did a mistake, and specifically one dot is slightly larger and it’s touching a big one. Creating a perfect result is quite challenging so don’t feel bad if something goes slightly off like it happened here. As the number of dots increase, the number of chances of mistakes also go up!

A couple of extra important notes: to clean your dotting tool, you just have to use your regular nail polish remover and your regular cotton pad or ball of preference. It’s that simple!

And for your top coat: wait. Patience is key. The dots have some volume so it will take some minutes to dry and pushing them with the top coat will smudge them. Positively. So wait for a while before applying your top coat and even then float it, don’t press with your brush.

That would be the end for today! I’m going through basic techniques so we can have an understanding for future tutorials, so in the future we might go through more interesting dotticures without having to explain the basics. The bad part about this approach is that I’m still figuring out the light and photos, so it is not the best quality. In any case, thanks for reading and I’m open to suggestions!