the half moon manicure

in preparation for a well-deserved (in my opinion!) saturday night out, i decided to experiment with a half-moon manicure on myself and a friend and i thought i'd show you the results and let you know how we did it. i've tried this type of nail art a few times now and so far this has been my best result so i'm quite pleased with myself!

firstly, paint your nails the colour you want the half moon to be. i chose gold and my friend chose black. do a couple of coats if need be so the colour is opaque enough to make an impact.


the crucial part of the manicure and the reason why its never worked particularly well for me before is because the base colour needs to be COMPLETELY dry before you go onto the next stage. this week we were prepared and painted our nails yesterday to ensure that they were dry. otherwise, the sticker just peels off the base colour and it's a total waste of time and a bit of a mess!

so, once the base colour is dry... 

to get the rounded half moon effect, use hole punch reinforcement stickers. i got a pack of about 200 from paperchase for about 75p. i've found that they're much easier to use when you cut a small chunk out of them as you can see in the picture above. once you've done this, stick the stickers directly onto your nails. make sure you stick them down well, otherwise the nail varnish will seep underneath.

then paint the top colour over the base colour. make sure you don't go beyond the base of the sticker so try and keep a steady hand! 

once the top coat is dry, slowly peel off the stickers making sure that the base colour isn't coming with it! if some does, use a small brush to fill in the gap. finally, to soften the edges, paint over the half moon manicure with a top coat.