Harley Quinn Mani Tutorial
To celebrate New York Comic Con (and the wildly successful Fan Girls’ Night Out, naturally), I looked to one of my favorite characters in DC’s canon for inspiration: Harley Quinn. Ever since the character’s introduction in the animated series of the early 90’s, she’s occupied a special place in my heart, not simply because she pulls off a jester costume the way so few people can, but because she’s, to put it politely, absolutely fucking nuts. There are plenty of reasons to love Harley, her poor taste in men notwithstanding, and with a few (sort of) simple steps, you can show the world just how much you care.
1. On all but your ring finger, start with a red base color. On your ring finger, start with black. There is a method to this madness.
2. Cut scotch tape into moderately thin rectangles. You can also use striping tape, but the thicker the tape, the more forgiving it is. Apply the tape to your pinky, middle finger, and thumb as seen in the photo. You’re going to be painting 1/4 of your nail black for now. While the polish is still wet, carefully peel off the tape. Allow it to dry while you complete steps 3 and 4.
3. Using striping tape (which you can be found at nail supply shops or on Amazon for crazy cheap), create the outline for two diamonds on your index and ring fingers. To do that, lay down three parallel pieces of tape and, loosely perpendicular to those, two more pieces of tape, as seen in the photo.
4. Using a small detail brush, fill in the diamond shapes. Black on your index finger and WHITE on your ring finger. While the polish is still dry, carefully peel the tape off. The reason for using WHITE on your ring finger is that laying red directly on top the black won’t give you that same vivid color that’s on the rest of your nails. So the ring finger diamonds take an additional step. Once the white is dry, place more tape down, exactly as you did it before, and paint over the white diamonds with red.
5. Now that your pinky, middle finger, and thumb should be dry, place more rectangles of tape on the opposite 1/4 of your nail to create the checkerboard look. Fill in the square using your black polish and peel off the tape while the polish is still wet.
6. Finish it off with a fast drying top coat of your choosing. Now you’re ready to wreak some havoc.
Finally, something that I can maybe manage to recreate!