If you plan on giving yourself an at-home mani, a double coat of jelly polish looks fabulous swept over a crystal-clear set of gel extensions. However, the trend is also a great way to give your natural nails a bit of a rest after removing acrylic tips or gel polish. Another way to get jelly nails at home is by concocting your own sheer polish. The TikTok video below is just one of many that instruct viewers on how to easily do it:
TikTok content
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In short, grab a new bottle of your favorite clear polish as well as a (preferably) highly pigmented color of polish. Remove the top of your clear polish and set aside, then position the brush of your pigmented polish over the top of your clear polish bottle; add a sizable drop of color into the clear bottle. Shake it up, and voila, you’ve got your own jelly polish. You can also play around with how sheer or opaque you want the color to be, but I recommend adding color in small increments because you won’t be able to remove the pigmented polish once it is combined.
If you’d rather head to the salon, ask your nail technician for “crystal” or clear tips, which are key to the jelly nail look. You can get them any length you want, but keep them long enough to clearly see the demarcation between the nail tip and your nail bed for the best effect. You can also ask specifically for the salon’s selection of jelly nail polishes before sitting down in the chair; if they don’t have any available, inquire as to whether they’d be able to mix clear polish with a drop of colored polish for your manicure.
And get creative! Pham says she loves how the transparent quality of jelly colorsmakes them “squishy” and provides “a lot of depth, whether it’s just simple application or with nail art.” Simple ways to jazz up your nails include trying more than one color on each hand for a full fruit-salad look, layering nail stickers and simple dot flowers over top for added depth, or fusing two jelly colors on the same nail to create a gradient effect.
