Ovarian Cancer Awareness Nail Art Tutorial

Today I have something very special to show you! I recently got in touch with Kelly from the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition and it was decided that breast cancer gets enough attention and it's time to show some teal tips! So here is a simple nail art design that you can recreate at home with the help of stuff you might already have lying around the house. We wanted to highlight the colors of the NOCC's logo, teal with touches of lime green.

(And I'm sorry that this looks so blue, and not teal.... that's my camera's problem. I promise in real life this polish is entirely teal!)

Step 1: Paint all of your nails with a base coat. I use Orly Nail Defense which you can buy at Sally Beauty Supply and CVS. This step is very important! It helps your polish last longer, with less chips. It also helps to prevent any yellow/green staining to your natural nail from these highly pigmented polishes.

Step 2: Paint 2 coats of a lime green nail polish. I used SPAritual Eye of the Beholder. Any lime green polish will do.

Step 3: You want to allow it a minute or two to dry. But you want it ENTIRELY dry before the next step. So to help speed things up, use a Quick Dry Top Coat. I applied 1 coat of Orly's Sec 'n Dry. (Seche Vite is also a good option).Within 5-10 minutes your manicure will be completely dry without risk of smudging or denting.

Then you grab these hole reinforcement stickers from your stash of office supplies. Hopefully you already have some lying around.

I pull out one sheet and cut the circles in half. I find this makes them lie down a little easier during the next step.

Pull half of a sticker off the sheet with tweezers. Best to use tweezers because you have more control over placement and it won't mess up any of your already painted nails.

Step 4: Line the sticker up with where your natural half moon falls. (I find it easiest to make the center hole in the sticker line up with my cuticle. Then they are always placed with the same width.)

Step 5: Press the sticker down so that there are no gaps and it lies smoothly with the curve of your nail.

Go ahead and sticker up all of your nails. You will then look silly like this:

Step 6: Paint 1-2 coats of your teal colored polish over the sticker and the exposed portion of your nail. Here I used Sinful Colors Savage.

Step 7:You can wait for the teal polish to dry, or you can do this while it's still wet. Using your tweezers again (so you don't mess up any of your nails) pull the stickers off gently. If your lime green polish is coming off with the sticker, you didn't let that step dry long enough. Pull the sticker off by pulling up and towards your cuticle, this will help you to have the sharpest line.

Next you will need a dotting tool of some sort. This is one I bought from eBay a while back, but you can use something simple that's already lying around the house. Cut a toothpick in half, use the rounded ends of a bobby pin, the pointed end of a pencil, anything...

This one is nice just because it already has 2 different sizes. One side is small:

The other side is slightly larger.

Step 8: Put a blob of nail polish in a darker teal (here I used Barielle A Bouquet for Ava) on a scrap piece of paper. Pick some up with the large side of your dotting tool (or the larger size of whatever you found around the house) to evenly space dots along the teal side of your manicure.

Step 9: Repeat the same process with your lime green polish again, but this time use the smaller end of your dotting tool and place the dots between your existing dots.

Step 10: You can stop here and add another layer of the Quick Dry Topcoat to finish things off. The topcoat helps to protect your art and make your manicure last longer.

Step 11: But of course it would be best to add a simple doodle of the cancer awareness ribbon to one of your nails as an accent. I just used the small side of my dotting tool to drag the dark teal polish into the ribbon shape.

Of course I'm very happy to have been able to share this simple design with you and I hope you have fun recreating it at home! And let us never forget the many women and families that have been affected by ovarian cancer in some way. Something as simple as painting your nails can help bring awareness to the need for more funding and research for a cure to ovarian cancer.