How to: Newspaper Print Nail Art!

Knowing how to do newspaper print nail art is pretty simple. Here are the easy peasy steps:

1. Paint your nails with a polish of your choice, preferably a light or bright colour so the newspaper print can show up easily.
2. Let your nails dry completely. (I was impatient and only let them dry 75% and it wasn't a great idea) 
3. Dip your nails in surgical spirit for about 5 seconds. (I have a little spray bottle filled with surgical spirit to disinfect my makeup and tools so I just sprayed my fingernail. Again, not such a brilliant idea, you can still try it though :) )
4. Immediately take a strip of newspaper and press it onto your nail while it's still damp. Ideally you should cut up some strips beforehand but if you're anything like me just rip 'em off as you go along. You can use strips which have small print or large headlines. It all depends on the kind of look you're going for and how long/short your nails are. 
5. Hold the newspaper strip taut with a steady hand. If you move about too much the print will get smudged. 
6. Peel the newspaper strip off slowly and gently. Now this is the tricky part. It took me quite a few tries to get it right. One of the times I didn't hold the strip down for long enough so the print didn't transfer. The other time I sprayed too much surgical spirit and the nail polish smudged and the newspaper strip got stuck onto my nails. To be honest, it's a process of trial and error and I'd suggest you play around with it a couple of times first. Unless off course, you're like me and are perfectly fine with a slapdash approach and more than happy to sport an imperfect but cool look!
7. Let the transferred print dry comepletey. Or not. lol.
8. Apply a layer of clear top coat and Voila! Sometimes if the print hasn't dried completely and you're too quick with the top coat the ink can smudge a little.

If you're too nonchalant about the whole thing, like I was, you might get newspaper ink smeared on your fingers so just make sure and wash your hands after the top coat has dried off. Completely. Can't be careless about this part otherwise you'll mess up your entire nail. Obv! 

As you can see from the pictures (this was my first ever attempt at doing this) only my ring finger is the one with straight lines of print and the other nails are all layers of large and small letters. Basically, what happened is that in the first few tries I messed up quite a bit and only half of the print was being transferred so I just haphazardly took more strips and tried to transfer them on top. I know it's not perfect but I kind of like it that way! What's that word? Edgy! Yup, it's more edgy, lol!! I spent about 10 to 15 minutes doing this but if you want a more perfect look with straight horizontal or vertical lines it might take you a little bit longer! 

Also, if you're scared of some really bright nail polishes you might have and don't use them anymore (I know I'm super scared of bright orange) you might want to give it a shot with those because the dark black print kind of tones down the brightness. I did this using the Nails Inc Special K Red nail polish (click here to read the review and find out how you can win some) which looked a lot brighter without the newspaper print on top!

So the moral of the story is, it's just nail art, you don't have to be equipped with loads of tools and be super talented to do it at home! Try it, have fun with it and let me know how it turns out!! 

Have you tried this before?

Will you be trying it soon? 

Would you prefer straighter/neater newspaper print nails or a more imperfect look?

Let me know ladies! 

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