NAIL ART: Cute & Swirly Valentine Hearts Gel Nails

by - February 10, 2023


Earlier this week, I received my order of a handful more of the Born Pretty Sea Blue Cat Magnetic Gel Polishes and it seemed like an absolute sin to not pull out the pink one and use it as a base for a Valentine's Day nail art design. I am absolutely in love with these polishes and every single time I wear one (which has, admittedly, been constantly on my mysterious other hand ever since I first tried them) you can often find me just wiggling my fingers around under different types of light to see how they pop. They're just so pretty and by now I've collection a bit of a rainbow of them so they'll probably pop up here on the blog a fair bit in the coming months.  

Keep reading for more!


As I always do when I'm applying gel polish to my nail art hand, I started by applying a generous coat of Unt peel off base coat to make removal easier. If I'm doing gel polish on my other hand, which I polish much less often than the one I use for nail art here on the blog, I skip the peel off and use first a bonder and then a regular gel base coat at this step so that my polish lasts and then instead of peeling the polish off when it's time to change it, I soak it off like usual.

Now, for the actual base polish, I went in with two coats. Now, these polishes aren't really opaque in two coats, persay, and if you apply them alone they will be a little sheer at certain angles but appear fully opaque at others. I think if you actually want to be sure that you do get opacity I would recommend applying them over a full cover undie. For this mani, though, I liked the idea of that see through sort of vibe so I applied it alone straight over my base coat. I did two coats of the magenetic polish, curing for 60 seconds after each coat. To get this particular magnetic look, the technique that I use is to place my magnet level with my nails at the edges of each side and the tip. It's hard to explain, so if you're curious about what I mean by that I would recommend checking out my tutorial for this mani over on my Instagram @pblnails!


For the nail art, I knew I wanted to keep it simple and I took inspiration from a few different mani's that I found on Pinterest for a combination of simple two tone swoops, pink hearts, and just a scattering of dots. Because I wanted the pink swoop to be the more dominant one of the two, I started by applying that one using a gel liner polish and I also added some bulk at one end of each swoop just to give more weight. Next, I went in with a softly off white gel liner polish and applied a slightly less prominent line of that color alongside the pink.

For the hearts, I decided to use the dotting tool technique that I've seen a lot of nail artists use. I started by applying two dots next to each other, leaving a gap between then, using one of the smallest dotting tools in my collection. Next, using the liner brush from the bottle of gel liner polish, I first applied a sort of V shape coming down from each dot and then carefully filled in the space between the dots to create a heart shape. I then went in and sort of just randomly added dots of the pink and off white polishes around the heart just to sort of bring everything together.

Once I was happy with my design and it was all cured, I finished with a generous layer of no wipe gel top coat for shine and to just level everything out. And voila!


All Products Used
Unt Ready For Take Off Peel Off Base Coat*
Born Pretty Sea Blue Cat Magnetic Gel Color - SB-09** ~ code TRYSH10 
Beetles Gel Polish - Festival Fuchsia
Beetles Gel Polish - Cloud Dancer
Aimeili No Wipe Gel Top Coat*
NailStuff.ca Dotting Tool** ~ code TRYSH

* = PR Sample // ** = Affiliate 


I have to say, I am really thrilled with how this turned out. My obsession with the Sea Blue Cat Magnetic Gel Polishes from Born Pretty absolutely continues, but I'm also really thrilled with how the actual nail art design turned out. I am notoriously a terrible hand painter and, while I know that this is very simple beginner kind of stuff, I'm really finding that using gel polishes is helping me to get a little better and steadier and more confident overall with hand painted designs. Love that!

As I said above, if you want to see a tutorial for this design, be sure to head over to my Instagram @pblnails where it will be posted in my reels along with all of the other designs I post here on the blog. Follow me there to keep up on all of my nail art!

Thanks for reading!


You May Also Like

0 comments