‘Jelly nails’ are taking over TikTok — here’s how to nail the mix-your-own trend at home
If you thought we left DIY manicures behind after the last lockdown, you thought wrong.
TikTok has brought our attention to the ‘jelly nails’ manicure and we’re benching our other go-to easy nail art ideas in favour of the new kid.
The simple and easy-to-recreate sister of the 3D jelly nail art trend is glass-like in finish and available in a palette of milky, translucent hues. It’s the kind of look we’ve been harassing our manicurists with for the last few months.
Plus, jelly nails are just about the easiest at-home manicure idea ever, and we’ve got your step-by-step guide to nailing the trend yourself…
What you’ll need
If you regularly like to paint your nails yourself then you’ll probably have everything you need at home (phew).
Grab your favourite base coat, a clear nail polish that you don’t mind sacrificing to the beauty hack gods, a coloured nail polish of your choosing, and last but not least, a clear top coat.
The technique
First things first, you’ll need to prep each nail with a thin layer of base coat.
Once that’s dried down, grab your sacrificial clear coat and coloured nail polish, opening both bottles.
Coat the brush of your coloured nail polish, then hold it over the opening of your clear coat polish, allowing a few coloured drops to drip into the virgin clear coat bottle.
Screw the lid back on, and in the eponymous words of the prophetic Andre 3000, “shake it like a polaroid picture”.
Congratulations, you have just created your very own custom jelly nail polish.
Apply two to three coats of the stuff atop your base coat before finishing off with a thin layer of top coat for a subtle glassy sheen.
Et voilà! A ‘jelly nails’ manicure is born. Let the heavens rejoice.
After some inspiration? Check this out…
Now that your nails are customised and cute, let’s upgrade your makeup. The TikTok lip colour hack is here to help you find your perfect lip shade.
Main image credit: @mannequin.hands
Briar Clark got her start in the media industry in 2017, as an intern for Marie Claire and InStyle. Since then, her keen interest in fashion and beauty has landed her gigs as a Digital Content Producer and Beauty Editor with titles like Girlfriend, Refinery29, BEAUTYcrew and beautyheaven. She loves the way seemingly innocuous topics like skin care and style have the ability to put a smile on people’s faces or make them think about themselves a little differently. A big believer in self love and experimentation, Briar has made a point of becoming the Australian beauty industry’s unofficial guinea pig for unusual treatments and daring hair trends. When she’s not testing out the latest beauty launches, Briar is big on broadening her horizons, mostly in the form of food but she’s also partial to travelling to new destinations both near and far (and of course, allocating an extra bag to bring their best beauty offerings home with her).
