I’m Obsessed With These Lisa Frank Nails, Here’s How I Made Them!

My sister wanted to have a press on nails party for her birthday this year. She also wanted a Lisa Frank-inspired theme. This meant two things: 1) I needed to make her a set of Lisa Frank nails, and 2) I was going to host a private Get Pressed Babe Pressed Party for her and her friends. Earlier this year, I started teaching my “Get Pressed Babe” press-on nails-making classes in Rhode Island. So I love any opportunity to get the girlies together and host a class. If you’re in the Rhode Island/Boston area, grab a ticket to my October Pressed Party and let me teach you how to do your own nails!

Anyways, back to this set chile. Here’s what I used to make these Lisa Frank press on nails. Check out my TikTok tutorial below to see how I made them step-by-step!

The Nails I Used

Since my sister has curved nail beds, we always use a sculpted (read: curved) nail shape for her press on nails. For this set, we used the Aprés long square sculpted nails that we got here on Amazon.

I recently got certified in Aprés Gel-X. So while I know you don’t need a base coat with these nails, I still like to use it anyways. My go-to is this Beetles base gel. I apply one coat and cure it under my DND rechargeable nail lamp.

Base Color

I knew I was going to airbrush bold vibrant colors on the nails for the background of the design. So this meant I needed to use a white gel polish as my base color to make the airbrushed shades pop. I applied one coat of “French Tips” by DNDGel and cured it under my nail lamp.

Airbrush Gel Polishes & Machine

My sister had previously gifted me this airbrush kit and set of airbrush gel nail polishes by Saviland. I’ve been using it more often now that they released their instant airbrush cleaner. It makes it so much easier to switch between shades and clean the airbrush machine. For this set, I used the shades yellow, vibrant orange, rose pink, grape purple, and dark blue. I cured each color under my nail lamp before moving on to the next shade.

I went over the airbrushed background with this rainbow cat eye glitter polish by Solwink, but honestly it wasn’t giving what needed to be gave. In hindsight, I would have skipped this step.

Animal Print Nail Art

Once the rainbow background was all set, I hand-painted a mix of tiger print and leopard print nail art onto the nails. I used this black gel polish by Beetles, and these nail art liner brushes from SheIn.

How To Make Nail Decals

My sister wanted me to use some of the same characters from her party theme on her nails. So I decided to make custom nail decals. To do this I printed the characters on white waterslide decal paper. I’ve seen a lot of people use transparent, but then they mentioned needing to use white gel polish underneath so the design they printed looked more vibrant. So to me, it seemed best to just use white waterslide decal paper instead. Once I printed the designs, I cut them out on my Cricut Maker 4 (as a print and cut project) so that I didn’t have to cut them out by hand.

Don’t Skip The Seal

Now, in my rush to get going, I didn’t realize I needed to seal the designs I printed. So as you’ll see in my tutorial, the design done slid right off and dissovled into the cup. So I had to start over. After I re-print and cut the nail decals, I went over them with one coat of my favorite gel top coat and cured them under my nail lamp for 60 seconds. This worked perfectly, and prevented the ink from running off/my design from disappearing.

If you don’t have something like Mod Podge on hand to seal your nail decals (or don’t have time to wait for it to fully cure), I recommend trying the top coat method I used. I used Beetles Nail Foil Art Glue to stick the nail decals onto the nails.

Builder Gel and Top Coat

To finish off my nails, I applied a coat of BTArtBox builder gel and a coat of top coat by Gaoy. I cured each coat for 60 seconds under my nail lamp.

My Nail Prep Routine

Do you have trouble getting your press on nails to stay pressed on? It’s probably you’re nail prep routine sis. To make sure my press on nails stay on as long as possible, I make sure to prep my natural nails really well. I show how I prep my nails in my tutorial below, and you can check out this blog post for more details.

Lisa Frank Nails Tutorial on TikTok (Step-by-Step!)

@flyfiercefab Let’s make some Lisa Frank inspired press on nails for my sister 💖✨ She put me and my @Cricut to WORK for her birthday party chile 😅😂 Btw, I used white waterslide paper to make my nail decals so that the designs looked more vibrant! Heres what I used: 💖 @Aprés Nail Professional long square sculpted gel x tips 💖 @BeetlesGelPolish base gel 💖 @DNDGel french tips gel polish 💖 @Saviland airbrush gel polish & airbrush kit 💖 beetles black gel polish 💖 @KoalaPaper waterslide decal paper 💖 @BTArtboxnails builder gel 💖 @gaoy_official top coat #lisafrank #pressonnails #nailtutorial #blackgirltiktok #cricutprojects ♬ Long way 2 go 2006 – 2000s90sMusicLover

Want to see how I made and applied these press on nails step-by-step? Check out my new TikTok tutorial now on my channel.

What nail inspo do you have saved for your next set? Let me know in the comments below!

Stylishly Yours,

Theresa Seyi

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