Black and Neon Dottciure

Hello Everyone!

When I sat down to do my manicure today, I had planned on doing a water marble with  black and neon colors. But once I had gotten about 3 nails done with the marbling, I decided I didn't love it. I took it all off and started over. I really liked the color combo and even though it isn't exactly a fall look, the black tones down the neon so it isn't quite summer either.
I've mentioned before that I'm not a freehand artist, not because I don't like or don't want to do it, but simply because I don't have very steady hands. I couldn't draw a straight line if my life depended on it, LOL. Which is why I really want some water decals, stencils, vinyls, and stamping equipment. But I already spent October's nail polish/art budget on new polish colors and November's budget isn't available yet. I sat at my desk considering my options for about 10 minutes before I figured out what I wanted to do: a dotticure! Now, I don't have any dotting tools, but I do have pins and toothpicks.
Turns out, doing dots isn't as easy as I thought it would be. I couldn't really get my dots to all come out the same size and some of them even came out as different shapes! But, all in all, I'm happy with the overall look. I'm willing to cut myself some slack considering that it is my first attempt at any kind of free hand design!
 

As always, I began with a basecoat to protect my natural nails. Then I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails 'Black Heart' as my base color. One thing I love about this particular polish, is that it is completely opaque in one normal coat. For my neon dots I used three Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear shades: 'Fuchsia Power', 'Blue Me Away!', and 'Sun Kissed'.  

Now, the plan was to have bigger dots in the center of the nail that would be smaller as I got closer the edges of the nail. However, I only have one size of pin and I couldn't really seem to vary the size of the dot with that. So, I tried a toothpick, since it is smaller than the size of the pin head. Maybe it is because my toothpicks are sharp and pointy on both ends and I need one that has at least one rounded edge, but I couldn't seem to make ANY dots with the toothpick. So, I did what I could to make them a bit smaller using the same pin head. I did mix up the design on bit. On the left hand, I have dots of every color on my thumb, then the fingers alternate between pink/blue dots and pink/orange dots. On the right hand, I only did dots in one color per nail. I like both ways, but let me know in the comments which one you like better!  As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this manicure. See my final results in the pictures below!