Top 10 Gothic Style Nail Art

We're constantly coming across ingenious and elaborate gothic nail art online so we thought we'd put together a collection of our top ten favourites. Some are achieved by hand requiring extreme accuracy and a steady hand, whilst others are achieved using nail wraps, decals and transfers which are readily available and can be found by doing a quick Google search. Here we've concentrated mostly on hand-painted nails as this shows a higher degree of skill, but how you achieve your gothic nails will depend on your artistic skills, your available time and whether you have a helpful friend or not.

#1 - Quite a classic style here but with the addition of tiny studs glued onto the third finger and the nails filed to extreme points which does mean you'd have to be quite careful you don't injure yourself or someone else!

#2 -Painstakingly painted red and black corset style nails. You would start with an all-over base of red nail polish then after allowing to dry thoroughly, paint a V shape with black nail polish. Then paint little silver dots on each side and finally using a fine tipped paintbrush (the nail polish brush will be too large for this bit), paint the corset laces. The effect is stunning.

#3 - These dripping blood nails featuring Dracula look amazing. The blood should be fairly easy to achieve by overfilling the nail polish brush and letting the drips run down but you'd need to allow quite lot of drying time. Dracula's face shouldn't be too difficult and you can add tiny little goggle eyes as shown in the photo. Again, use a fine tipped paintbrush for the smaller details.

#4 - These Edward Scissorhands nails are a work of art! The scissors will be hard to achieve but the best option would be to cut them out first from some sheet acrylic and file any rough edges before gluing them to the nails with a strong nail glue. You would use the same technique for Edward himself on the thumbs and use the base of the nail for his PVC buckled choker. Although these look amazing, they're not at all practical for everyday wear! But then neither were poor Edward's hands!

#5 - These fishnet stocking hand painted nails are quite easy to achieve and very effective. Paint the base colour all over the nails, in this case with purple nail polish. Then using a fine paintbrush, paint the criss-cross lines with black nail polish and finish the nail tips with a swipe of black to represent the stocking tops. A very steady hand is required for this look.

#6 - This is a very simple look to achieve but to get the drama of the colours just right, get the darkest rubiest red nail polish you can find. To make sure the black curved nail tips don't mess up the look, it's advisable to use French manicure nail tip guides.

#7 - Similar to the purple fishnet nails above but by using a sparkly red nail polish with sparkly black tips, they have more of a burlesque look to them. Love the high mirror finish on these. Use the same technique as the purple nails above.

#8 - There are two ways to achieve these gothic cross nails - see what works best for you. Method 1 - paint the nails black and when completely dry, paint on the crosses with white nail polish. Needs a steady hand. Method 2 - paint the nails white and after drying, make simple cross stencils out of masking tape or preferably, surgical tape. Place these stencils on the painted nails and go over the entire nail with black nail polish. This second method is more likely to give you clean crosses but it's more fiddly and you must make sure the stencils are stuck fast at the edges to prevent any black bleeding onto the white area.

#9 - These very effective nails, known as ombre nails, use a sponging technique which gives a graduated two-tone effect. There are lots of online tutorials on achieving this look but briefly, paint the nails in the lighter colour first. Then mix the first colour with the darker colour and sponge the lower part of the nail to blend.

#10 - Let's not forget the toenails! Frequently on show in the summer more so than the winter, you can really go to town, especially during the festival season. These clever Dracula themed nails feature an open mouth with teeth and fangs on the big toenail and little black bats on the smaller toenails. This is one look where it might be better to get a friend to help!

This gothic lace and cross bracelet from The Gothic Catwalk is perfect for showcasing your newly painted gothic nails.