Four nail art design ideas to try at home

• Insider's Caroline Aghajanian creates four DIY nail art designs with things around the house.
• Use a toothpick or bobby pin to create polka dots, a sponge to create ombre nails, tape for different designs, and plastic wrap for a marbled effect.
• The easiest and nicest nail art method to try is polka dots using a toothpick or a bobby pin.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Caroline Aghajanian: Here are four easy DIY methods to create nail art on yourself. Try ombré or gradient nails with a makeup sponge, polka-dot nails with a toothpick or a bobby pin, various nail designs using tape to create stencils, and a tie-dye or marble design using plastic wrap. Here's how it works. And here she comes. Wow.

[cameras clicking]

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's a home salon. Welcome to Caroline's Nail Parlor. I got my sponges, I got my nail colors, I got some really cute nail colors. This is gonna be fun. The coffee has definitely hit. First I'm going to try getting ombré nails with a makeup sponge. Aah! There you go, got my sunset nails! The sponge technique, you get the hang of it, but do, like, a little swipe and then a dab, dab, dab. Like, if it's not perfect it's OK. You can make it perfect. I wanted a sunsetty nail design, so I picked white for my base, then light pink and coral to blend together. That's ugly. I'm doing a terrible job. This nail polish is not my favorite. I'm blaming it on the nail polish and the nail and the camera setup. Merp. I'm just gonna do a single coat. I'm not gonna do a double coat because I just want it to dry fast and this is the base. The white isn't even gonna show. I painted the two colors onto the sponge, then dabbed that on my nail. I had to add more of the light pink to really get an even blend. And sometimes it was more convenient without the tape to really get the color on the corners of my nails, even though it was messier. So, I tried to get the colors on by one clean swipe, and that seemed to work better than the tapping technique. And then I went back and blended the colors. Not bad for a first-time sponger. Not bad. This nondominant hand is kinda doing terrible things to me. Yeah, my hands are starting to hurt. I can't believe I did that one upside down. But, hey, it came out looking the cutest. So, I found a very old makeup brush that I haven't used in a while and salvaged it into an acetone brush to clean around the nails. Warning: Acetone will kill and dry out your makeup brushes, which is why I used one that I didn't mind destroying as a last resort. Once I put on the topcoat, the colors blended together into a clean, smooth-looking polish. And here they go down the runway.

[cameras clicking]

The next method is probably one of the easier ones. All you're gonna need to make polka dots are either bobby pins or toothpicks. So, for this look I went with a dark green polish with white polka dots. I did two coats of green polish, and I have to say I did a great job with that application. Some videos I've seen suggested dripping a small amount of the polka-dot color onto a piece of paper or a Ziploc bag. I used an index card, and it worked just fine. Adorable. This came out really nice, and this was just with the bobby pin. At first I didn't love the toothpick application. Seems like the polish kept drying out, which made a really messy polka dot. Look at me. Look at the nail artist. I'm doing so good. I'm doing better with my nondominant hand with these polka dots, which is strange because it requires a lot of focus. Honestly, I didn't see too much of a difference between the bobby pin and the toothpick after getting the hang of each one for a while. Both of them kind of dry up at the ends, but you just have to rub that dried-nail-polish part off, and you'll have, like, a fresh edge to start off with. Done. [gasps] Cute! Yes, wow. I did so good. Too bad I have to take it off in, like, 10 minutes. And here she comes. Wow!

[cameras clicking]

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yes, yes, yes. And where are all your friends? And here, ladies and gentlemen, is my lowest emotional point of the video. The part where Caroline forgets to press record on the nail cam. Oh, my God. I have not been filming the reveals of this hand the whole time. Oh, my gosh. And you know what? You guys didn't miss anything because they came out ugly.

[tape screeching]

All right, for this I am going to tape my fingers up into different designs and use two colors to achieve some fun stuff. I might need scissors too. I'll grab that later. Do I do blue or purple? I guess it doesn't really matter. We'll do blue. Aw, OK, these nail polishes are so hard to open. For this design I did a double coat of the first color since it was a bit sheer. I waited longer than usual for the blue polish to dry to put tape over it. So, for the thumbs I wanna do kind of, like, some stripes. We're gonna do some, like, checkered print on the index finger, and we just have to put tape on two opposite corners. For this finger, we're just gonna put the tape diagonally. If you take tape, fold it in half, and cut out a half heart from the middle, you get a heart-shaped stencil. Easy, right? No. OK, well, it's just supposed to open up, but that's kind of hard, so I'm gonna try a new one. Come on, I don't need this heart to be an issue. I guess love does not exist. Bonus tip! I placed the tape on my hands a few times so it would lose its stickiness a bit and make it easier to unfold. Well, because this heart literally took forever and all of my other tapes are falling apart, I am going to just do a classic French manicure for the pinkies because I'm getting lazy. Cool. So, all of my nails are taped up and ready to be painted. Let the nails completely dry, then remove the tape. They came out ugly. Let me show you what I forgot to film. So, for the thumb, I tried to take off the tape. This tape came out fine. But then we got here, and then it split halfway, and then I used a toothpick and I ruined it here. And then, and then we come here, right? We come to this nail, and it's fine, but it's not great. And then we come here, and this nail, once I took off the tape, this part came off too! And I waited hours for this blue to dry. And the one thing that came out nice was this little heart. Yes, the heart, something that I don't have right now because it's been taken from me from the camera. And now we're trying this pinky, which, all it has to do is just be a French manicure, but can it do that? I don't know! Oh, no! Oh, no! Nope. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. How long am I supposed to wait? Nail art is supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to make me wait 10 years. If you wanna do anything with tape, maybe just one day paint your nails, have it dry, and I guess cure overnight and then the next day you know it's 100% dry. Then just put the tape and finish off the design. Do we even strut these nails? Do they even deserve to go on the runway right now? Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. [laughs] Womp.

[cameras clicking]

Meh. And last but not least, I'm creating a marbled nail design using plastic wrap. I'm going for a cotton candy, pastel-y tie-dye look with this. This is the color I did yesterday, but we know how those nails went. See, I'm not even kidding, like, this is already dry. I did a double coat of polish and let it dry. I am going to get my Saran Wrap. Carefully. I'm sure you can be more graceful. And then crinkle it up. I know I'm gonna mess up, so I'm gonna make a few pieces. I don't wanna ruin my nail. Carefully! We're good. Pink polish is going on normally. But I think I removed too much polish from the center. So I'm just gonna add a little bit more and do a dab-a-dab there. I kind of like it! It's like bubble gum, ooh! This is kinda cute! The good thing about this is that if you mess up you can just keep trying. All right, so now we're going into a little bit of the bigger pieces. Maybe that will help make the design nicer. Let's see. Oh! Now, that's nice. The good news is the cleanup wasn't as time-consuming as I thought it would be. If no one believes me, this is why you should use a brush you don't care about. And that's the end of this brush. And once I applied the topcoat the two colors blended together perfectly.

[angelic chorus harmonizing]

I forgot to send these nails down the runway, so here's how they look a week later.

[cameras clicking]

So, there you go. Those are four DIY nail techniques that you can try at home if you're a beginner like me. Let me know if you've tried any of these techniques and how it's worked for you, and other DIY nail techniques I can try at home. Bye.