#nail-polish

By Kathleen Hou

Sometimes, despite your aversion to the mani cam, you just want to see something pretty on the small centimeter-long surfaces of your nails — nail-art death be damned. But if you lack the hands of a surgeon or aren’t ambidextrous, drawing a Matisse on your own pinkie is out of the question. That’s why we asked Jin Soon Choi, Fashion Week’s favorite manicurist, for the world’s easiest pretty nail art. In the GIFs below, she shows how you can use a mascara wand to draw a galaxy on your nails, for no-skills-required nail art.

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Step 1: Apply a base coat and the first shade. The easiest way to paint your nail, Jin Soon explains, is to do the overlap technique. Use the full width of the brush to make your first stripe as wide as possible, alongside one edge of the nail. Here, we use Jin Soon Polish in Heirloom.

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Step 2: For your second paint stripe, slightly overlap it with the first and fill out the rest of the nail. This reduces painting each nail to two simple strokes.

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Step 3: Take a disposable mascara wand and bend the brush in half (I grab these from Sephora).

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Step 4: Dab the mascara wand with a silver metallic polish, like Jin Soon Polish in Melange.

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Step 5: Liberally dot the mascara wand all over the nails for a spacelike effect. Don’t smash it too hard into the nail, which would disrupt the first coat.

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Step 6: The finished look.

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