Black French with Dotted Flowers: Easy Spring Nail Art Tutorial with Steffi

In this tutorial Steffi Fernandez creates a stunning black French with colourful flowers on top. The flowers are mapped out with a dotting tool and pulled in with a detail brush, making this a super simple design that looks beautiful when it all comes together.

Apply two layers of Birthday Suit all over the nail. It has a beautiful pinky-peachy undertone that works well on darker and medium skin tones. Cure for 30 seconds.

Put a little Serious Black on your palette. To speed things up, use the brush from the bottle to paint the lower section of the tip, then map out the French and paint it freehand, making sure it looks nice and even. Cure.

Dab a little Buttercup, Guilt Trip (a gorgeous blue) and Kabuki (a coral shade) on your palette. A dotting tool makes mapping out the flowers much easier.

Dip the dotting tool into Kabuki and apply dots in a circular shape, then add another dot in the centre to mark where to pull the petals in. Shape your detail brush, then pull each dot inwards. Cure for about 20 seconds so the next flower can be layered without the colours mixing.

Wipe the dotting tool and pick up Guilt Trip. Paint a slightly larger circle of dots so it sits partly on top of the first flower, then pull the colour in. Pull out any petals that need evening up, then cure.

Using Buttercup, add a flower on the edge of the nail and another elsewhere, plus extra pink ones where they fit. For half flowers at the edge, just pull the colour straight through with the detail brush. Fill any gaps with a little more blue around the edges, then cure.

Apply a nice thin layer of Urban Graffiti Top Coat all over to seal it in.

• Use dots as a guide. The dots shape the edges of the petals for you, so there is less work to do with the brush.
• Cure between flowers. A short cure before layering the next flower keeps the colours from mixing.
• Go bigger to save time. Painting slightly larger flowers means you won't need to fill as many gaps.