Kylie Jenner has everyone whimsymaxxing on main, and bare princess nails are easily the best canvas for your untapped bedazzling skills.
Earlier this month Jenner celebrated her 29th birthday with a playful gemstone-covered birthday cake, seemingly awakening a deep-seated desire to cover everything with those plastic gems that ’90s girls used to buy in bulk from Michaels. But what do you do when you don’t have a chunky desktop computer to bedazzle like Carmen from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? You start with your phone case…and then move on to everything else.
ScreenshotInstagram/@kyliejenner
Suddenly thousands of girls on Instagram and TikTok feeds were jumping on board, covering their beauty products, coffee cups, laptops, and yes, even their face masks in colorful gems for a fleeting hit of dopamine. A bit performative and wasteful? Sure, especially if you’re adding a bunch of plastic stickers to single-use and disposable products! But whimsymaxxing is a very predictable response to the clean, utilitarian aesthetic currently dominating fashion and beauty trend cycles—and there are ways to indulge without going so hard in the paint.
Right after succumbing to the naked-nail takeover like everyone else, Jenner employed celebrity nail artist Zola Ganzorigt to create a set of “crystal candy nails” that scratches the same itch. The base of the manicure is a pinky nude polish that fits within the bare-nail trend—then randomly placing colorful crystals in various shapes and sizes were added on top. In the words of Kylie Jenner’s Instagram story, “I mean, does it get any cuter?”
Personally I find this to be the best take on whimsymaxxing, and just as easy to DIY. While rhinestone nails are nothing new—in fact, they’ve been trending all summer—there’s something particularly fresh and playful about the random placement of these mismatched large stones. Plus, you don’t need nearly the control and precision that smaller rhinestones require.
According to celebrity nail artist Loi Lien, you can use acrylic gel to set the stones on top of a milky neutral polish before curing everything under a UV nail lamp. Or you can just…take some nail glue and Swarovski glass crystals and have at it. My pitch: Invite your girls over and get to bedazzling those nails! Next thing you know, you’ll discover you all fit into the same pair of jeans that bond you in a sisterhood that can never be shaken! Or something like that.
