As Seen on Pinterest: Gold Reverse Manicure

Arden: Hi, friends!  Today, I'll be basically directly recreating an amazing pin I found on Pinterest a couple weeks ago.  Sadly, it has no attribution-- as always, if you know where it originates please let me know!

Here's the picture directly from Pinterest:

picture from http://25.media.tumblr.com/2e64a12603189eb49d0b3b0964cec791/tumblr_mh4kicdDNI1qfye3lo1_500.png

Now the way you classically do a reverse manicure (also known as a half-moon manicure) is to paint your nails the color you want at the base of your nail, apply a hole reinforcement sticker at the base, paint the top color, and remove the sticker.



But to recreate these nails, I was worried that the gold glitter polish was going to be bumpy, and I didn't want to paint the pink over bumpiness.  So I went with a different approach.  Which I almost don't want to tell you about, because it was definitely NOT the easiest way to do it.  But I'll tell you anyway, so you can learn from my mistakes!

What I did was start by painting the bottom half of my nails gold.  My gold glitter polish didn't have great coverage, so I started with one coat of Essie Good as Gold. 

I then put a hole reinforcer over the base of my nail, and used a q-tip dipped in acetone to clean up all around the half-moon shape.  Unfortunately, this resulted in the sticker getting wet with acetone, sticking to the gold polish, and then the polish peeled off with the sticker.

So, I started on a new strategy.  I forgot about the hole reinforcement stickers and used a q-tip dipped in acetone to free hand the half-moon shape.  It worked pretty well.

Then I painted the tops of my nails white, and then light pink.  A little bit got on the gold (which was unfortunate) but it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

In hindsight, I now think the better way to create these nails would be to paint them pink first, and then just free hand the gold half-moons on top of that.  If anyone tries it that way, let me know if it seems to be easier!

Colors used:

Milani Gold (this is two coats over one coat of Essie Good as Gold)

Maybelline Color Show Born With It (this is two coats over OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls; it is quite sheer!)

Milani Gold (how creative!)

Maybelline Color Show Born With It