If you are not aware, the only difference between a “regular” manicure and a French manicure is the polish. With a French Manicure, you are going to use a flesh colored polish over your whole nail, and a one of variety of colors of white polish on the tip, and sometimes the moon. You can do this on fingernails as well as toenails. The French Manicure has been popular for a very long time on your fingernails, and is currently extremely popular for the toes.
Choose your flesh colored polish carefully, taking note of your skin color. If your skin color is warm (you look and feel your best in yellows, oranges, browns, or the lighter shades of these colors) you will want to choose something peach colored. If your skin color is cool (blues, purples, fuchsia, black), you will want a light pink shade. You have many choices in the white department too. There are whites that are very translucent, and very opaque. There are ivories and snow whites. Generally speaking, if you are a warm skin tone, you will choose an ivory, and a cool skin tone will want a white. If you are more dramatic personality you will want a more opaque white, and if you are more subdued, a more translucent shade will suit you best. Of course, you are free as a bird to choose what you like best! Just use this as a guide if you have not decided what you like as of yet. Here is a post from eBeautyDaily that talks a little more in depth about colors. After applying your base coat, you want to apply two coats of flesh colored polish, using the three stroke technique I described earlier. At this point, I will suggest that you let your polish dry for about 10 minutes before you begin with the white.
The best way to do your white tips is to really support both hands, and starting at one side of your nail, swipe the brush slowly across the tip of your nail, following the natural line where your nail separates from the tip of your finger. The most important thing here is supporting BOTH hands. I rest the finger that is to be painted on the edge of a table, and the heel of my working hand either on the table, or sometimes somewhere on the hand that is getting polished. Hold them very still with the edge of the lightly loaded brush on the starting side of the nail and gently rotate the finger that is getting polished under the brush. You might find a better way to do it, but this is what works well for me, especially when working with my non-dominant
hand. Allow the white polish to dry for about 10 minutes before proceeding with the topcoat, as the topcoat brush will often pick up some white and paint it onto the flesh color. Not pretty!
If you would like to paint the moons, start at one side, just like the tips, and with the very tip of the brush, paint a teensy moon on your nail right next to the cuticle, and if you have moons there naturally, right over them. Wait until your polish is totally dry to clean up any mess on your cuticles. Mess on your cuticles is pretty much unavoidable when painting moons!
