Peter Elliott

pelliott.ca

some canada day nail art

by peter elliott, 2026-08-26

a friend of mine was talking to me about doing her nails for canada day. she figured that she could probably paint a 3-pronged maple leaf, or worst case do a little red blob (imagine the hypothetical flag of japanada). i figured i could probably make a very small maple leaf stencil. now most of the time i figure i can bang out a craft real quick, i am very wrong. but this time i was right!

so i went to wikipedia, downloaded an svg of the canadian flag, extracted the maple leaf, scaled it to the right size, printed it and cut it out with my trusty x-acto #11.

a hand cut paper maple leaf stencil, about half the width of a thumbnail
a little wonky, but pretty good

wait how am i supposed to affix this to the nail? okay lets try that again. this time i printed a few different sizes, to see which would look the best, and cut through the paper onto some painters tape.

printed paper stencil taped overtop of painters tapestencil cut out of the paperthe weeded peeled up stencil

we stuck the painters tape on the nails, making sure every part was well adhered.

tape stencils applied to nails
oh yeah i had to make 2 (but i actually made like 5)

she then painted the stencil

painted applied to stenciled nails
so far so good

after the nail polish had partially dried, the tape was removed and voila!

painted nails with stencils removed
🇨🇦

I'm pretty happy with the result. they're a little blobby though, but the internet says you can fix that by using a sponge to apply the nail polish, and removing the tape immediately after to avoid the polish being pulled back off by the tape.

canada flag nails, posed like the flag
flag mode

anyway, I kind of want to try to design and cut some more complex, multi-color stencils now.

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