Half-Moon Manicures--Super Easy with Gel Polishes!

In my last post, I had a pretty bright red on my nails.

I'll be honest: reds scare me a little.  I love outlandish colors, but RED? I understand this is totally weird, especially because I have about 20 shades of red lipstick that I love to wear, but only about 3 red nail polishes. So to encourage me to wear red a little more, I decided to do a half-moon manicure again.  I know, I know, I do simple things like this a lot.  But hear me out!

Red is a staple color from many decades in the early to mid 1900s (when the half-moon manicure first became popular).  There's a great German-based website that has a vintage makeup guide for the 20's through the 40's that has a few interesting things about nail trends/colors/advertisements here (just click on "extras" on the left).  I think it's a cool look into the past, and since red polish is a pretty simple, classic color, I felt a half-moon would be pretty fitting.

And what do you know... I think this does more wonders for my nails than I could have imagined!  The contrast of the half moon brightens up your natural nail beds and makes them look vibrant and pearly all on their own.  The moon shape at the bottom elongates your fingers, whereas usually I feel like red polish makes my fingers look stubby. I have never liked red on my nails so much; now I feel like my fingers glow kind of like a traffic light or a stop sign...but in a good way! I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do this type of manicure much more often from now on. 

Since doing a half-moon manicure is so easy with gel polish, I decided to film a short "tutorial" of how I do it.  I'm still trying to find out what filming style is best, but I think this one came out pretty evenly focused: