It’s been a while since I’ve done this mani, but I love the effect so decided to give it another go.

Left hand

Right hand - please excuse the messy edges that come from being painted by my non-dominant hand, and the messy cuticles that come from me not paying as much attention to this hand because I so rarely photograph it!

For the base, I used Sally Hansen Beige Blast, a colour that I originally bought just for newsprint manis but have since found to be a great neutral base colour. I also love the Sally Hansen wide oval brush shape, which makes it easy to cover the nail and get clean edges.

On the downside, it is supposedly “Insta-dri” but I found the two coats I used took aaaages to dry, resulting in some squishing of the undercoats as I pushed the newsprint against the nail. This was with me leaving the coats to dry a lot longer than normal that I would were I just painting on top of them too.

Better people than I have posted newsprint nails tutorials, but since I had forgotten half the tricks that worked for me since I last did them, I’ll record them here:

1. Let your undercoats dry really really well. (See above re. re squishing the undercoats!) A quick-dry topcoat won’t cut it, since it might stop the top layer feeling tacky but won’t get all the layers dry.
2. Rum works just as well as rubbing alcohol. It always seems like a sad waste of alcohol, though, since I just can’t bring myself to add the rum to my coke after 1/2 hour of dipping nail polish in it.
3. I have seen some tutorials that say just to dip your nail or the paper in alcohol, place it on the nail for a few seconds, then slowly remove. This does not work for me at. all. The result is a faint, blurry transfer. What DOES work for me is: dip nail in alcohol. Put paper on nail. Press it down, really really hard. Count to thirty seconds. Peel off paper. Let it dry. Yay!
4. A quick dry topcoat (I use China Glaze Fast Forward) doesn’t seem to smear the print at all, as it has a tendency to do with fine designs otherwise even if they seem dry.
5. Mix up print sizes - headlines are a really cool, striking effect when mixed up with normal-sized news print.