Manicure How To: Galaxy Nails

Ever dreamed of flying to a galaxy far, far away? Well, you can embrace your inner astronaut with fall’s nerdiest polish trend – galaxy nails. Painting little solar systems on your nails is easier than it sounds. All you need is dark blue nail polish and a few different types of glitter polish. If you really want to make the effect look out of this world, add in streaks of purple and white. Go crazy! Express yourself. Nail polish is the new lipstick, after all.

Step 1:
Paint your nails dark blue. Make sure the polish coats your nails thoroughly on the first coat, but don’t worry if it’s not quite perfect. You’re going to use lots of other polish, so you can hide imperfections easily. I focused more on the edges of my nails than the center, because I knew I’d be using tons of glitter.

Step 2:
Add streaks of color. Imagine swirling solar systems or shooting stars. I painted each of my nails with small streaks of dark purple, but colors like white, orange or green could work, too. You can use a cotton swab to blend the streaks or remove anything you don’t like before it dries.

Step 3:
Go nuts with glitter. This is the fun part. Choose different colors of glitter nail polish and try to find nail polish with glitter in different sizes. The little pieces of glitter will look like stardust, and the big pieces give a planetary effect. I had three kinds of glitter–gold, silver and blue, and pink.

Step 4:
Finish off the look with a clear top coat. This application took me just about 30 minutes from start to finish, but it looks I spent hours on my nails!

Tip
For a more well-defined look, let your nails dry between each step. For a more blended look, apply the steps one after the other.


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