Nail art is all the rage these days. Different colors and designs can be used to decorate your nails, and even rhinestones can be glued on for a 3-D effect. If you want to learn how to add rhinestones onto your nails, follow this guide.

Step 1: Gather your materials.
Choose which color you want your base to be. Get your rhinestones together, clear nail polish to act as the glue for the rhinestones, and tweezers to hold the stones and place neatly on your nails. You can get nail polish from any drug store, big box stores, salons, or online.

Step 2: Preparing your nails
If you have any nail polish on your nails already, use a polish remover with a cotton pad and make sure your nails are completely clean before you start. Q-Tips dipped in nail polish remover will reach the crevices on the sides of the nails. Using a buffer will hold the polish better as well. Pick off stray cuticles and push them back to make more room on your fingernails.

Step 3: Start painting
Paint your nails and let them dry completely. If you’d like, use a couple coats to ensure that the polish will stay on longer without chipping. Make sure that each nail gets polished evenly. A neat trick for making them dry faster is to dip your fingernails in ice cold water, and you can even spray cooking spray on them for a glossy finish.

Step 4: Add the rhinestones
It is your stylistic choice to decide what colors and sizes of rhinestones to use. You can find small rhinestone kits either online or at craft stores. Get a piece of paper out to put a dab of clear polish on. This will be the glue to dip the bottoms of the rhinestones in. Start with the biggest pieces so that you’ll have space for the smaller ones as well. Using tweezers to hold the stones will help you be more accurate in placing them where you want. You can make different designs for each nail or make them look all the same.

Step 5: Securing the design and cleaning up.
To make sure that your rhinestones don’t fall off your nails, you can add a top coat of clear polish to secure them in place. Sometimes it is difficult to paint your dominant hand neatly. Once you are finished painting your nails and adding the desired rhinestones, grab another q-tip and dip it in nail polish remover. Wipe off any polish that got on your fingers, especially closer to the nails.

Author
Jason Pistiner
Google