Choice of:

• No-Chip Manicure and Basic Pedicure
• No-Chip Manicure

Nail Art: Accessories at Your Fingertips

Nail art takes manicures a step further than simple nail polish. Check out Groupon’s guide to learn more about this timeless trend.

Whether acrylic or natural, decorative nails can define a style as well as a well-stocked wardrobe. Going beyond the solid-color design of traditional nail polish, artists punch up fingernails with intricate details ranging from marbleized patterns to colorful stickers. Nail art can also incorporate three-dimensional elements such as miniature bows, flowers, or gemstones—patterns that literally pop and make it easier for nails to snag tricky soda-can tabs.

Nail art is hardly a new trend. Many historians believe Egyptian and Indian women decorated their fingertips with henna as early as 5000–3000 BC, and Chinese aristocrats from the Chou Dynasty covered their nails with protective jeweled guards reminiscent of today’s acrylic nails. In the New World, the Incans were marking their fingers with pictures of eagles as early as the 15th century. In fact, solid-color nail polish in its modern form wasn’t invented until the early 1900s, when it was at first a fairly unorthodox fashion itself. According to scholars, one of the first notable women to publicly display fully painted nails was that undisputed arbiter of 1940s taste—Eleanor Roosevelt.