Valentine’s Day Nail Design + MASH Dotting Tool Review

Hello! ^^

I hope everyone had a good weekend. This past weekend I celebrated Lunar New Year with my family. It was a good weekend with lots of good eats and family bonding. But of course and as always, the weekend went by all too quickly!

Today I am going to share with you my Valentine’s Day Nail Look. This has got to be my favorite nail design that I’ve done on myself, ever. I really love how it turned out and I find myself looking at my nails quite often to admire them ~ hehe. 

Here’s what both of my hands look like. Please excuse my one shorter thumb nail that broke off a few weeks back.

To get this look, I used my MASH Dotting Tools, q-tips, and nail polish remover.

My boyfriend bought me this dotting tool set as a random gift one day (how sweet!). He got them from Amazon for about ~$7.

Before I owned a dotting tools set, I used to use lots of other house hold objects such as: ball point pens, pencils, needles, and toothpicks.

This particular set of dotting tools comes with five different tools, each having two different sizes allowing you to have a total of ten different options.

Having so many different options really allows you to create beautiful nail designs with ease. Here are some close ups of all ten options available.

Since I had these tools, I decided to use them to create my Valentine’s Day inspired nails.

With this look, I wanted to go for a sweet and girly feel. I find that the flowers are a perfect alternative to having hearts or too much red and pinks for a Valentine’s Day themed nail design.

For the base colors, I decided to go with lavender and this off-white with a subtle pinkish tone nail polish. Both brands are by Sally Hansen.

I painted my nails the same way that you would normally paint them, but tried to avoid painting the area near the cuticle so that I could create that half moon look. Once I painted on a few coats and let it dry, I went back in with a q-tip dipped in nail polish remover to clean up the half moon area. The arch doesn’t have to be too perfect since there will be a gold outlining on top of it.

Once the base of the nails are finished, you will need to pick out four different colors for the flowers. Here are the four colors that I choose and why.

  • A darker shade of lavender (primary base) – sometimes it’s good to not stray too far from your overall nail colors, so choosing one that is similar to the other nails will help create more of a theme for your nails, as opposed to having random colors.
  • White (secondary base) – having some white helps break up the color and makes it not look so muddy.
  • Bright Pink (flower center)- this is where you can add whatever random color you like and it makes your flower designs pop.
  • Teal (leaves)- you can actually choose whatever shade of green that you want for this one, from blue greens, to lime green, or dark green, it all depends on what look and feel you are trying to achieve.

Once you’ve carefully picked out your colors for your flowers, all you have to do is:

  1. Use one of the larger bulb type dotting tools and dip it in your primary base flower color and make a giant dot for each flower.
  2. Once the dot is semi dry, take a smaller bulb type dotting tool and dip it in your secondary base flower color and make a smaller dot in the center of your previous dot.
  3. Then take your pointed dotting tool and attempt to swirl the two colors together. Be careful to not over do it because you don’t want to mix the colors together. You want to be able to still see what each color is.
  4. Next take an even smaller dotting tool and dip it in your flower center color and make a small dot in the center of each flower.
  5. Once your done with the flowers, you can start on the leafs! Take your small dotting tool and dip it in your leaf color and dot one or two leafs for each flower.
  6. Again take the pointed dotting tip and draw a line across the center of each dotted leaf. You will start from the end of the circle nearest the flower, and draw a line away from it creating a leaf shape.

By now, the nails should look pretty good. All you have to do left is add some gold and whatever gem or jewel you want.

To draw the gold lines, I used one of the smaller bulb type dotting tools and dipped it in my China Glaze gold nail polish and carefully traced an arch on each finger. Then I placed a gold oval gem on the center of each arch that did not have a flower design.

Once all of my nails dried, I applied a clear top coat by Sally Hansen to all of my nails to ensure that the gems don’t fall off and to increase the life of my nail art design.

Hope you guys liked my nail design! I wasn’t actually planning on making this into a tutorial, but I ended up describing the process of how I created these nails anyways. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave me a comment below and I’ll answer them as soon as I can!

MASH Dotting Tool Rating: ★★★★★

  • Good tools to have around if you like to do nail art
  • I used to use sharpened pencil and lick the lead all the time to stick gems on my nails, so this is probably healthier
  • It’s super affordable and easy to get
  • Much better than constantly searching around the home for “something” to use 

 

17 Replies to “Valentine’s Day Nail Design + MASH Dotting Tool Review”

  1. I Love your nails – So pretty! :)) Lavender and a floral designs are great for Valentines / spring. I also followed your blog, because I really enjoyed reading and learning new things from your posts.

    1. thanks for following jessica! i’m happy to hear that you enjoy reading and that you are actually learning something from my posts 🙂

  2. woww..love it!The nails are so girly and cute! They are perfect for valentine´s day 🙂
    Thank you for sharing Sarah! xoxo

    1. thanks so much sara 🙂
      glad that you approve of my nails! loll~

  3. Oh sweetie really cute nails desing thanks for the explain. Happy new year chinese to you!

    xoxo

    http://www.sakuranko.com

    (*ゝω・)ノ

    1. thanks so much! <3
      lol i hope my explanations made sense too~

  4. This is soooo cute Sarah! Love the nail art and the color! You’re so good at it dear! And wow! Lovely long nails! I can’t even grow my nails that much! Haha. Love it!

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    1. i’m sure you can grow your nails out long if you wanted to. and thanks for all of the compliments! you’re making me blush *^^*

  5. I have trouble even doing the simplest of nail polishes on my fingers. This requires way too much precision. 😉

    xoxo,

    Jules of Canines & Couture
    http://www.caninesandcouture.com

    1. i’m sure you can do it with a little practice! honestly i didn’t even know what I was doing when I did my nails. hahaha, it was all “experimental.” but it turned out well!!

  6. Love the nails! I just did florals on mine too :3 And dotting tools are so useful!

    1. thanks christina! i’m not very experienced with dotting tools yet, but i am getting to know the wonders of it! i wanna see your nails!!

  7. i saw many blogger do this nail and your roses is pretty and perfect! i did it to my self and it looks ugly =.= maybe i need this dot thing. pretty nails i like the colors <3

  8. Beautiful nails! I especially love the floral print 🙂

    Your tools look so…intimidating. I hardly do my nails and when I do, it’s always one colour, I’m too impatient to try and make it super fancy.

    http://sushiibear.blogspot.com

    1. lolll i like how you chose the word intimidating. hahaha yea, i guess its definitely a step up from simply painting your nails one color. its kinda tiring to spend so much time on doing nail art, just to have it go away after a few weeks. but you know what, i’ve actually had this nail design for more than 2 weeks now, and it’s still in perfect condition!! no chips or anything~ i’m amazed.

  9. You are incredible with nailart Sarah!
    I have these dotting tools as well, but
    I use it to create miniature clay food
    haha..

    xx http://icepandora.blogspot.com

    1. omg your a genius!! i was planning on making little clay creations for me to deco stuff and also use for my nails. these dotting tools would be perfect for sculpting my super sculpey clay! 😀 now i just need to find something with a straight edge..

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