Take one great story and memorialise it on your fingertips

I recently discovered a great new twist on manicuring – newspaper nails. No doubt this has been around for centuries and I am only just getting on the bandwagon. I decided that if I was going to put print on my nails I might as well make it a little bit political, even if no one else would notice. So here’s how you too can have crazy and mildly subversive nails too:

1. Find a great story or opinion piece in a newspaper that you have lying around and would probably chuck out otherwise. I chose this one.

You could theoretically use any colour of the rainbow for this trick

2. Paint your nails some kind of base colour. I chose white but you could really use any kind of base colour if black ink will be visible on it. Wait till a few coats of the base colour are dry.

3. Dip your first finger in a little bit of alcohol. Apparently people use rubbing alcohol for this, but I found that if you have spare gin lying around, that also works completely well.

I used Tanqueray, but any high proof alcohol will do. I guess.

4. While your finger is still wet with the alcohol, take a small section of your chosen op-ed, etc and place it on top of your nail, rub it down smoothly and hold it in place. The alcohol should bring the ink off the page onto your finger. Oh the miracle of chemistry!

5. Remove the paper after about thirty seconds and the ink should be left on there (albeit backwards). Let this dry and then paint with some clear lacquer.

The finished product. Perfect protest material.

6. And with that you should have the amazing science of fingernail newspaper art complete. While people may or may not be politically moved by the backwards small print newspaper article on your fingertips, at least you’ll know that you have captured something important.

Here’s some nails I prepared earlier —>

I like that my middle finger says “queer mardi gras” backwards. And that’s really all it’s about in the end.