Half Moon Manicure with Essie + How to

So, I don't know about everyone else, but I am loving the new half moon manicure trend. But, if you're like me, you want to know how to do it yourself. Well, I've tried two different techniques to do this. The first is the free hand technique with a nail brush. This is where you place the light coat on your nails first and then dip a small nail art brush (or small acrylic brush) into the darker color to draw the moons. Then you use the rest of the darker color to fill in. This is difficult for me despite my ability to use my left hand pretty well. So, what to do?

I found via youtube that another technique is to use binder reinforcements to create the moon shape and paint over it as a guide. That, my friends, is what I did here. However, I found that it's easier to cut the binder reinforcements in half to make it easier to stick them to your nails.

So, this is what you do:
1. Paint nails all over with a base color. I prefer to make this a light color since you're going to be going over it later. This is the color of the 'moons'.

2. place the reinforcements on, one hand at a time, and paint over in your top color. I would advise that these colors have good contrast to make it stand out more.

3. remove reinforcements and add a top coat. done!

Below is my finished product. I have Essie's 'imported bubbly' on the bottom and essie's 'coat azure' on the top.

Sorry for the blurry pic below, but it's a good close up of the moons.