French Tip with Band-Aid

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So I saw this on Facebook from Nail Impressions.  She used a round band-aid as a french tip guide.  I thought that was kind of brilliant.  I almost never use the round band aids that come in the first aid kit becasue they are too small to use on any substantial injury or they fall off after 10 seconds anyway.  They are the perfect shape for a nail guide and unlike the french tip guides I've used in the past and they actually stick.  I've used scotch tape and painters tape to get a straight line, but the band aids actually give you the curved line.  I've freehanded a white line with a brush and acetone before for a traditional french mani, but it never looks quite right and it isn't as crisp as I would like.  This way you can do a funky or a traditional french and you can actually tell where the line is going to go.

Start with a completely dry base color, here I have Pixi Real Rose, see the full post here.  Cover the dry nail with the band-aid.  You can do this on a bare nail if you want to do a traditional french o over your base coat if you are using white as your accent.

 

Add your french color, here I'm going with China Glaze Full Spectrum.  If you are doing 2 coats do it very quickly while the 1st coat is still wet.



Peel the band-aid off as soon as you are done while the accent color is still wet to get a clean line.



Pre top coat and clean-up
 

Let the accent dry for a minute and cover with top coat.  Clean up as you would normally.


The final product

A few tips:

• Make sure your polish is completely dry before you apply the band-aid.  You'll get weird marks on your nail if you don't wait.
• Make sure the band-aid is completely pushed down along the side of your nail so the polish doesn't leak underneath.  You can use a cuticle pusher or pointed nail file to help.  In the beginning you can use a dry nail.
• Make sure you don't get any polish on the back of the band-aid, it will transfer to your nail.
• Just like with any other tape, remove the band-aid while the accent polish is still wet to get a clean sharp line.
• Depending on how fast the polish dries on the top of the band-aid and the quality of the adhesive you can use 1 band-aid for all 10 nails, you might need 2.  I needed 2 for both hands.

So what do you think?  Would you try band-aids as a nail art tool?  I have a bunch of these in a drawer that won't ever get used.  I will totally use this technique again.  It was fast and easy, and used a household item I already had onhand.