1. Prep and paint. “After you’ve filed your nails into the desired shape, pushed back your cuticles” — remember, DO NOT CUT THEM!— “and applied a basecoat, grab a dotter tool and with the large and small end of a dotter tool, dip each end into a white opaque polish and, starting a little bit back from the cuticle, begin to create white dots across the center of each nail,”

2. Dot on light gray circles. “Wipe off the dotter tool with nail polish remover, and then using the same technique that you used in step two, dip the ends of the dotter tool in a light gray polish and toward the tip of the nail — and overlapping some of the white circles — make large and small dots,” Whitehill says.

3. Create charcoal dots. “Using the dotter tool again, wipe it clean before you dip both ends into a charcoal-colored polish to make tiny and big dots at the tip of your nail, creating a gradated effect,” she says.

4. Add black. With the same techniques used above, take the dotter tool and dip it into a black polish and add dark dots to the tip of your nail, covering some of the charcoal-colored dots.

Culled from www.cosmopolitan.com