A Really, Really Easy Way to Do Nails - No Experience Required

December 11th, 2013

Hey guys, sorry sorry sorry for not posting for a long time. The times have been rough. xD
Just to get warmed up again at this stuff, I'm doing a post on nails. Just for fun.

I don't spend all my time painting my nails, but I do paint them once in a while. There's all these complicated tutorials online where you have to water marble, or paint animals with nail polish, on your nails. Frankly, the results aren't so awesome, either. And in order to do those, you need a lot of colors, which costs quite a bit of money.

So, I developed a new idea which requires pretty much no painting skills, and only one color of nail polish. But you do need a printer. A regular inkjet printer. And, of course, YOU DON'T NEED TRANSFER PAPER OR SOME OTHER KIND OF FANCY SCHMANCY DECAL PAPER OR WHATEVER. TOO MUCH WORK. :D

Steps:

1. Paint nails in one color. I used pink.
2. Find some pictures on the internet, or draw some pictures and upload them to your computer.
3. Copy and paste the pictures onto MsWord.
4. Resize the pictures to make them smaller (about the size of your fingernail)
5. Print the page out.
6. Cut the little pictures out.
7. Get some rubbing alcohol, or vodka. Whatever's more convenient. I used cooking vodka, since it's used around my house for cooking/frying so often.
8. Pour that into a shallow pan/plate. It's easier than using a tall glass or cup and wastes less.
9. Dip one fingernail (immerse it) in that pan for maybe 5 seconds.
10. While you're doing that, dunk one of the pictures in the rubbing alcohol.
11. Take your finger and the picture out, and position the picture (with ink side touching fingernail) on your fingernail.
12. Once you're happy with the positioning, press down. Hard, but not too hard. Keep pressing for 20-30 secs.
13. After that it should be really easy to pull away the paper, and the picture should be transferred onto your nail.
14. Apply a top coat, or else the ink will wash away.
15. This is what mine looked like (Christmas themed! :DD):

 

As a sidenote, I named the reindeer on my index finger Bob. Say hi to Bob. :D

This is basically a variation of the newspaper nails trend that was going on a while ago, but everyone's putting so much effort into actually painting pictures when they could just print out pictures and plaster them onto nails. Less work, guys! Instead of painting designs with dotting tools and stripers and everything, just transfer from a regular sheet of printed paper.

This strategy works for black pictures, grayscale, and color. Just use an inkjet printer...I don't think laser-jet will work, but maybe it will. I don't know; I've never tried it.

Comment if you have any questions!