I love drawing and doodling line art. It’s great therapy and you know what it’s also good for? Nail Art! A win-win in the name of self care. So how do we merge these 2 awesome activities? With my favorite medium – temporary tattoos! In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can transform your gorgeous doodles or abstract art into temporary tattoos for your nails! Read on for the full step by step instructions!
*This post contains affiliate links for products that I use and love!
What You Need To Know About Temporary Tattoo Paper:
No news here but I use Printable Temporary Tattoo Paper A LOT. If you’re new to this little blog, I thought I’d share an introduction to this awesome medium, that will hopefully answer any questions you may have before using it for your nail art.
You can make all sorts of temporary tattoos with Silhouette America’s Temporary Tattoo Paper. The temporary tattoos you make are perfect for kids’ and adults’ party favors and sporting events. What’s also fantastic about these tattoos is that you can apply them to smooth surfaces like your nails! The tattoos can be applied easily with water, and generally last a day or two.
Silhouette makes a range of temporary tattoo paper options:
- Clear
- Gold
- Silver
- White
For today’s nail art project, we will use the clear sheets, because you can print images on the sheets and they come out with a clear background that is perfect for your nails!
Materials: DIY Nail Art With Temporary Tattoos
- Silhouette Studio (there is a free version available for download!)
- Your doodles on white paper drawn with black pen
- Printer
- Temporary Tattoo Paper
- Scissors
- Scraper
- Wet cloth or sponge
- Nail polish
- Clear Top Coat
How To Make Nail Art With Temporary Tattoos
Apply Your Nail Polish
If you have not done so already, apply your nail polish to your nails, and let them dry. Save the top coat application for after the nail art is applied
Digitize Your Art
- With a black pen, draw your abstract art or doodle on white paper
- Take a picture of your art (I used my phone)
- Upload your abstract art or doodle to your computer
Open your abstract image in the Silhouette Studio software
- Open your abstract or doodle image in Silhouette Studio
- Use the trace tool to trace the image – the black lines of your drawing
- Resize your traced image for your nails
- Change the line color of your traced image to black
- Fill the color of your traced image to black
- Mirror your traced image so that they are reversed. When printed and applied to your nails, it will appear the correct way
- Replicate and place your images in the printable area of the Silhouette Studio software
Print Your Nail Art onto Temporary Tattoo Paper
- Load your white temporary tattoo paper into your printer, making sure that the images will print on the glossy side. I recommend using the highest quality print settings or photo paper settings
- Send to print
- Let the ink dry
Prepare Your Temporary Tattoos for Nail Art
- Apply the adhesive sheet (with the green backing) to the top of the sheet you just printed with your nail art images
- Use the scraper to smooth out any bubbles and rub the adhesive sheet to the images
Cut and Apply Your DIY Temporary Tattoos To Your Nails
- Use your scissors to cut out the nail art images, staying very close to each image’s edge
- For each tattoo, peel off the clear adhesive layer
- Apply each tattoo image down on your nail, and cover with a wet cloth or sponge for 10-15 seconds until the white paper backing slides off easily
- Apply the top coat to seal the tattoo
And that’s it! You’ve made your own custom nail art with temporary tattoos! Tell me in the comments below how they turned out!
Looking for some more crafty inspiration? Take a look at some of my other DIY Temporary Tattoo Projects!