Skeleton Bow Tip Tutorial!

As requested, a tutorial for the skeleton bow tips. First tutorial, so it’s a little rough, but bear with me! I pinky promise i’ll get better at putting these together! Anyways…to start out you’ll need a base color, a tip color and a detail color (I’m assuming you all know about base coats and top coats. If not? Seche Vite or else).

Anddd here we go, okay? Okay.

For my base color, I used Confetti’s “First Kiss”. My tip color was Sinful Color’s “Black on Black” andddd the detail color was from a white nail art pen that was so worth buying.

After you’ve filed your nails, applied a base coat and whatever else you do before starting a new mani (maybe you guys do a little dance?), it’s time to start out by applying the base color. “First Kiss” took about 3 coats to be completely opaque.

After that, you’re going to take your tip color and make a half moon shape about 1/4 of the way up your nail. You can do this with a fine brush, a toothpick or even a dotting tool if you happen to be that skilled. Obviously mine is a little messy, and I managed to smudge it.

It could probably be done with a paper reinforcement, much like the half moon manis.

After that, you’re going to take your tip color and fill in the tip. Easy enough, right? Wrong. I didn’t wait for the base color to dry and it was a mess. Thank god black is incredibly forgiving.

Now that you have that, use the fine brush/toothpick/whatever to draw a triangle coming out of the middle of the half moon, and fill it in.

Now you’re going to use your detail color and place a dot in the triangle area, and make two bars along the rim of the half moon. Again, this could be done with a dotting tool, but I took the lazy approach (story of my life) and used a nail art pen.

After that, you’re going to turn the two bars into kinda sorta half moons (the pictures make more sense than I do). And don’t forget to draw a line from below the bottom of the triangle to the end of the nail.

Now that you’ve got something that looks like a dragonfly, fill in the half moons and add another bar below each half moon.

Ta-dah! Finish it off with a coat of Seche Vite (or another top coat if you must) and wait until it dries. Please please please wait until it dries, i’ve ruined far too many manis this way.

Related: I now usually only have my left hand painted, and in a bizarre jumble of nail art at any given time.

Exhibit A (although this isn’t the worst combination):