Women feel it somewhere inside, the need to look beautiful, smart and pretty. This is more like an innate DNA that strikes every time they see a pair of shoes that strikes their mind or an outfit that had been luring them on to buy for a while but were really not happy with the price tag attached to it. It is like us women are more into buying but it is a fairy tale to have someone else’s credit card to do the much needed.

As much as we earn and work hard we get a little miser when it comes to buy to our hearts content. There rather is no heart’s content as there would be more shoes, bags and clothes every time we step out to get some bread and eggs. Most women play very close attention to what they buy, how they take care of their wardrobe that includes organizing the stuff, keeping the things safe from any damage and also arranging them so that they can easily co-ordinate the accessories well with everything. Likewise, they also spend hours and dollars looking after their skin and hair as nothing looks good with bad skin and messy hair. Salons are always packed with women getting haircuts, hair dyes and tons of other hair and skin related treatments, and now to everyone’s surprise women have also involved themselves in the art of nail design.

It isn’t in fact correct to conclude that nail art has been a decade old trend. Centuries ago, the treatments given to nails were more of a status symbol rather than a personal style statement. It has been recorded that in the ancient era of Babylonia (3000 BC) men used to grind lead and create kohl in order to paint nails. Lost Egyptian art depicts Pharaohs and their wives dying their hair, finger and toenails in a rusty red color that they achieved with the help of juice extracted from the plant of henna.

This is still a very common practice in the entire Middle East and regions of the South Asia. Dating back to thousands of years ago Chinese belonging to the Ming Dynasty spent their time and effort in wrapping their long nails in nail guards that were made out of gold and silver and some were even decorated in precious stones. For this reason, they had special servants who were appointed just so they could take care of all the personal chores for the Chinese Kings and Queens, as they were themselves not capable of doing so because of their nails. It was also witnessed in the same Chinese culture that they successfully created lacquer made out of beeswax, egg whites, gelatin, gum Arabic, and vegetable dyes that was used to paint the nails. The trend in the West along the line of the 19^th Century was a whole lot different to what it is today.

In the time period between 1800-1900, there was a complete anti-cosmetic attitude that bore the idea of importance of an individual’s inner beauty. For the women of 19^th century, their morals and physical hygiene demanded that their nails should be properly trimmed and shaped with the nail tips as bright as they could be. The use of lemon juice and vinegar together was a homemade treatment to achieve a brighter glow on the whites and this was a rather wealthier style statement of the time for a common man had no extra time to impart it on such a leisurely activity.

The modern nail art was born after the cinematic boom when famous celebrities appeared in Hollywood movies with subtle colored nails making them look elegant and glamorous. It was a rough technique by then to develop nail lacquers using tiny scraps of clear films and some castor oil. Though it still wasn’t in the reach of a common woman till the 1915s. The colors that originated from this technique were not as deep and to commercially beat that Revlon in 1930s (company by Revson brothers and Charles Lachman) successfully induced the addition of opaque pigments, which helped with maximum coverage when applied on the nails. Working its way in the industry many new brands hopped on to the bandwagon and introduced many new innovations on the way.

Now there is no such color in the world that cannot be identified with a shade of nail lacquer. In fact, it wasn’t long ago when portable machines were introduced that allowed women to mix a shade or two to create a unique and personalized shade of their own (this business however, did not go on for long). A manicurist in today’s date, spends hours working on different designs some created on her own and some inspired by a large number of designs available worldwide with the aid of the Internet. There are now tons of ways to accessorize the nails, which include beads, studs, diamantes, and crystals.

The acrylic nails or extensions that has become a high-end trend of the decade were introduced in the 50s by Maxwell Lappe to facilitate women who were of a habit to bite their nails. With the passage of time and with the use of technology manicurist have succeeded in giving fake nails/acrylics a more realistic look. For them, nails have become a challenge in which they create their imaginary art on such a small canvas. The world too is appreciating the art of manicurists where worldwide competitions are organized in different parts of the world. Nail Olympics are held on an annual basis in Las Vegas, America. Research has concluded that American women annually spend about $6 billion or even more in nail bars or at the manicurist’s station.

Thus, making the art of nail design and manicure one of the highly priced form of art. With the aid of social media, blooming artists share their work for recommendations and suggestions and this eventually creates a pool of inspiration for many. On our behalf, we have populated a list of 100 cute nail art ideas to make your next trip to the manicurist filled with a lot of options to try out from.

Nails play an important role on a woman’s look because not only they can make your hands beautiful, but also they depict how much you care about your looks and personality, being a woman. The best thing about cute nail ideas is that you don’t have to put artificial nails in order to achieve it; you can perfectly let your nails grow a little bit so the design looks fuller and perfect.

There are several effect nail polishes available in the market like Crackle effect, Croc effect, Magnetic effect, Color changing polishes etc, you can easily use them for a quick and a different nail look. There are several ready to use nail art designs available in market like Water decals, Nail stickers and full nail wraps and interesting thing is that instructions for applying them is also mentioned there for the beginners. You need to read this if you are looking for how to paint your nails like a pro.

116. Dotting Manicure

It is the most easiest and simple nail art design for the beginner users. Interesting thing is that these dots look simple but yet attractive. Apply any base color to your nails and then put various colored dots in different styles to get your look.

115. Cute Monster’s Filling

One of the cute nail ideas is to put monster’s design on your nails. It is a design of drawing strips with the pictures of funny monsters. Monsters looks weird and amazing if found on nails, so try and enjoy your experience.

114. Soft Angel Nail

Simple and soft angel nail ideas are so elegant because they enhance the beauty of natural nails. What makes this look so innocent is the color scheme, simplicity of design and round shape of nail tips.

113. Bow Nail Art Design

Bow Nail Art Design stands unique among cute nail ideas for parties and formal functions and it can be done easily with polka dots and nail stickers.

112. Drip Nails

Drip nail designs are awesome and creative cute nail ideas because they are versatile and do not comes with same designs every time. Dip your nail tip into black nail paint and create crazy patterns with it.

111. Mix Match Nails

Having mix and match nails looks very trendy and superb. You can get this design by painting your thumb and middle finger yellow, your pointer finger black with white polka dots and your pinky finger white with black lines and your ring finger in a graphite glitter color. Your mix match is ready.

110. Pearls And Jelly Nails

This cute nail idea is quite in and is done with blending nail paints and shining pearls together. A simple nail polish is applied as a base and blending is done through glitters and gel to make it creative nail design.

109. Moustache Nails

OMG! This nail design is damn cute and weird. Try this cute nail idea for fun and absolutely you will like it in any case. Moustache is the symbol of bravery, so merge it with feminine touch to have it on nails.

108. Rainbow Caviar

Rainbow style is really popular among cute nail ideas these days and it looks so yummy that you want to eat those fingers to have them. It is so simple, apply base color on nails and then put vibrant colored dots on all over the nails to give them candy look.

107. Sunset Nails

Marvelous sunset nails; this nail idea is very flexible and attractive when it comes to colors and layout. It will look cooler if you blend bright colors with soft ones. Apply red, orange, green, blue, violet and black at nail tips to enhance its beauty.

106. Style Me Pretty

The black and white trend is always in fashion and we found a few cute nail ideas to style your nails in the black and white combo.

105. Flowery Pattern Nails

Flowery pattern nails excel in beauty in all other nail ideas. In this design, calgel treatment is applied on nails and then decorates it with different color polishes by drawing beautiful flowers. You can also fill these flowers with glitters to give a shimmery touch.

104. Half-Moon Nails

It is done by using soft colors like pink and off white as a base. Then half moon is carved and filled it with golden glitter. It looks extremely beautiful on long shaped nails. Pattern can be drawn in the middle of the nails too.

103. Panda Nails

If you are interested in panda nail ideas, here comes a superb nail design to have it on your nails. You just need something round and about the right size for this cute design. First, paste a white semi circle on the tip of your nail and wait it to dry. Use a dotting tool (a hairpin) to make ears and nose with black nail paint. Let the black dots dry; now add smaller white dots on black circles to enhance the eyes. Panda nail shape is ready!

102. Stylish Black White Nails

I love this awesome design; fabulous combination of stylish black tips with shimmery white base catch the attention at first look. It is very simple, apply shiny white nail polish on your nails and wait it to dry. After that, print the tips of your nails with black curves. Apply white dots on black color to give it catchy look.

101. Fashion touch; Stylish ideas for stylish Ones

I hope the cute nail ideas discussed above will be helpful for you as these nail ideas are extremely simple and you can try them at home with so much ease. You just need basic things to get started with nail art, like nail art stickers, dotting tools (needles, toothpick etc), rhinestones, stripping tapes, cavier beads, glitters, nail polishes in different colors with topcoat and base coat, acrylic nails, bobby pins, makeup sponge, cotton swab, nail polish remover and nail art brushes etc.

100. Dotting Manicure

This nail art can be graded as the simplest of all. You simply need a bunch of your favorite nail colors and then you choose the lightest of all those colors as your base and then keep the rest of them as shades to play with by making dots of different sizes and colors. It is more like a game of colored polka dotting, where the conventional theme is always monochrome and in this technique you can use different shades to add a little more feminism.

99. Cute Monster Filling

Are you creative enough and know your way with creating your own characters? Then we are sure that you would love doodling some alien/monster creatures on your fingertips. The great thing about this cute nail idea is that you can be imaginative and you are free to fill up your own tiny canvas. But one thing you need to take care of is that the faces that you are going to create should be facing downwards towards the ground and not towards you because that would kill the entire effect. I’m sure most of you would be completely aware of this concept.

98. Soft Angel Nail

Soft Angel nails require a perfect manicure in which your natural nail shape is maintained and they are neatly filed because the main emphasis is on the neatness of the nails and the skin around. You might have seen this kind of manicure on many celebrities and artists because this is what makes them grounded and elegant. If you are a funky kind of person then trying out the soft angel design will give your entire personality a very subtle outlook. The key is to have a fresh manicure and a very neutral shade of nail color.

97. Bow Art Nail  Design

Bows have always been the symbol of feminism and cuteness ever since a baby girl is born into a house. Both the mother and the father wish to accessorize her with cute bow bands and bows on shoes, frocks, and everything else they can get their hands on. When the girl gets older the trend gets funkier. With this bow art nail design you can have a very elegant nail design and can also add in a lot of color if you wish to, this is all dependent on your mood and taste. A lot of nail art accessorizes are available and bows are a part of these accessorizes. While adding bows to your nail design make sure that you add the bow to a single nail only.

96. Drip Nails

We are sure you are going to have quite a lot of fun creating this design. I have always been a fan of painting. Though, I really don’t know my way with it and often I end up creating a whole lot of mess with paint blobs all around and wet paint dripping from one place to the other. This is the concept behind the drip nails that you are to recreate the effect of dripping nail paint. This can be easily done by using two shades of nail color and adding white dots on to the dripping nail color to create a 3D visual effect.

95. Mix Match Nails

You can go crazy or completely sane with this type of nail design. The name says it all ‘mix & match’ means you can either go with a single base color and then go about adding lines or polka dots on top, or you can use two to three contrasting colors and then play around with glitter, accessories and even diamantes. You are free to play around as much as you want.

94. Pearls  And  Jelly Nails

Now this is a very artistic kind of nail design idea and this might require you to use the help of an expert or you can yourself try out with some experimentation. The design though looks quite professional, where the nails can be filed in a stiletto shape and then we can accessorize it with some jelly roses and plastic diamonds. We can also call these as wedding nails because they are kept white and transparent which makes them a perfect combination with the wedding gown.

93. Moustache Nails

This is such a cool trend where you can add on a tiny moustache on the tip of the nail with the help of a stencil of course, but if you are experienced enough you can even go freehand. Moustache has slowly become quite a trend and you can see a lot of souvenirs designed with the same concept, like mugs, notepads, t-shirts, pens, etc. Neon colored base with a moustache in black is going to look absolutely amazing.

92. Rainbow  Caviar

We call it rainbow caviar nail design because the colors are so cute and so edible that you would wish if your nails were actually cupcakes and you could simply chew them off. You need a good floral color, like rosy red, pink, sky blue or any color on this side of the spectrum, then simply apply the base color and then grab some tiny beads and simply press them on top of the base color before it completely dries off. This way the nail color will hold as many beads as possible and once dry will give the perfect rainbow caviar look.

91. Sunset Nails

You can bring out the artist within you with this wisely drawn sunset on the beach nail art design. You might have drawn a cute sunset by the beach when you were a kid and you would be taught to make the things in front of the sun to be black as they are meant to be silhouettes. This cute nail design is also comprised of lovely palm trees as silhouettes while the base color can be a mix of yellow orange and purple to show the horizon. To paint the horizon is the trickiest part.

90. Style Me Pretty

You might have seen a number of tutorials on the Internet where women are teaching how to do freestyle geometric designs on your nail. Well the technique is quite simple and easy where you take some water and add some glycerin into it. Then you are meant to add in your nail colors drop by drop and use a toothpick or a small stick to create patterns you wish to appear on your nails. Once done, you submerge the nails inside the liquid let it stay for a while and when you take it out the pattern is painted on top of the nail (though it is on the skin too but you can clear it off with a remover).

89. Flowery  Pattern Nails

Women always love flowers and everything and anything that has flowers printed or designed on top of it. So how can we not think of floral designs as nail art design ideas? This design is equally popular among women and there are a number of variations you can see where women use some bold floral patterns and some subtle designs. You can use a grassy green base and add a topcoat of glitter on to it. After painting the flower petals you can even stick some beads to show the pollen area of the flower. More like accessorizing the flowers.

88. Half Moon Nails

We have loved the French manicured nails and this is still the most loved trend, years after. Looking at the French manicure, many nail stylists looked up to the ancient form of nail art for inspiration and came up with a reverse trend, which is called the half moon trend. The half moon trend is designed in the way that the bottom curve of your nail is treated as the part of the moon and the crescent is drawn on that area of the nail using a white/grey/black color, while the rest of the base is colored in a different neutral shade. This gives the nail that half moon effect.

87. Panda Nails

Pandas are the only kind of bears that people aren’t afraid of and really want to hug and play with one, in their life. Animal loving women can use pandas as props for their nail art design and they can very easily design panda heads on the tips of their nails using black and use the white color to draw the face, ears and nose of the Pandas.

86. The Piano Nails

If you are a music fan, you will simply love this nail art design idea. It suits perfectly for women who are involved in playing instruments, especially the piano. You can draw in piano keys on your nails and even add one or two of your favorite notes on an alternating fingertip. This design is meant to give you that very orchestral kind of look. For women who are not into playing instruments but love to listen to music should also go ahead and give it a try, once.

85. Heartbeat Nails

You would have used the heartbeat design at a lot of places, like an email or sms signature, a tattoo design, a ring design and now you can even go for a heartbeat nail art design. Sounds fun, isn’t it? It sure is. You can use all four of your fingertips to design a pulsating heartbeat while the thumb can be kept neutral. The best shades to use for this nail art design are grayish black and red. Doctors, paramedics and even nurses can rock this humbling nail art design idea.

84. Social Media Nails

Who doesn’t spend hours in front of the computer and the mobile surfing through one social networking website to another. Facebook, twitter, tumblr, Instagram are just a few names where majority of the people spend key portions of their day, browsing. So why not go for a social media logo nail art design. Looks kind of nerdy but who doesn’t love a nerdy chic? For the base color you can use white color, as all the logo designs will stand out on the white base.

83. Meme Nails

One more growing trend thanking to social media is the widespread love for Memes. Yes there are all kinds of memes spread all over the Internet and even custom memes are created within days or even hours. You can use any of your favorite meme design and then add in your custom message to add a very personalized touch to it. Not only will you be laughing at it after it gets done but your friends will also have a good laugh along with you. What a comic way to celebrate a great nail art design idea.

82. Super Hero Nails

There’s no time to be only crushing at your favorite superhero because now there’s so much more that you can do to show your love and support towards your favorite superhero. If you can’t finalize which superhero theme to go with then simply add in all your favorite superheroes in each nail and give it a collective theme.

81. Tuxedo Nails

Though, a pretty manly thought but you will definitely get some male attention when you paint your nails with some fine tuxedo designs. Guys are pretty aware of the latest trends and this tuxedo design will make them have a giggle at first and maybe you can share some good tuxedo color schemes with them for their future references. You can also surprise the man in your life with his favorite tuxedo design, painted on your nails.

80. Paint Blob Nails

We have previously discusses a painting based nail art design idea and this time we are going to add some variation to it. You can go with either a paint dripping nail art idea and you can also get a lot cooler by doing a paint blob design. You will love creating this design because you are supposed to be freestyle and you don’t need to direct yourself thinking how big or small the blob should be, or even how round or irregular can it be. Just be cool and drip along a few nail paint blobs here and there.

79. Musical Note Nails

Like the piano nail design idea we have another cool instrument based nail art idea and this is a lot cooler than you can think of it to be. This time instead of painting the piano keys you can go with all kinds of notes. Doesn’t matter sharp or flat notes, just go with the flow. You can also either get a specific musical note painted on the nails or if you do not have the relative knowledge then go with whatever looks nice to you. Just like a kid’s dream to do whatever they want to do.

78. One-Directions Nails

For girls who are diehard One Direction fans, why not dress up as a true fan? Yes, just like everything else you can even have a One Direction themed nail art design party. There are a lot of One Direction inspired nail art design ideas that you can select from but if you are not sure what you are looking for then keep it simple in your first try. We have even seen women who have got One Direction band member portraits designed on their fingertips, isn’t it like the coolest thing ever?

77. American Dream Nails

Who doesn’t want to live the American dream? Everyone who leaves their country and travels miles to reach America have one or the other dream mapped on their brain and they work day in and day out to achieve that dream/goal. The struggles that one goes through, the problems that one has to face during that journey to achieve the dream is called chasing the American dream. There’s so much you can get painted on your nails that remind you of your American dream, but to show the attachment a creatively designed American flag is the easiest you can get for yourself.

76. Cute Owl Nails

Animals are always the cutest and they make the perfect prop for nail art design idea. For owls you can design some really cute looking cartoonish owls on your fingertips. The colors to use as owls can be dirty brown, green, purple, blue and even red. Remember, you are going to design a cute nail design so you can be as crazy and cute as possible. Nail art design tools/brushes can be used to create owl ears and eyes and nose and for beginners it will take time to achieve a level of neatness in their design.