Nailed It!

Surprisingly great faux nail results on puppets with this technique.

 

Thick vellum was cut to nail size and coated on both sides with matte medium which caused to temporarily curl up. Once dry, the bed area was painted a deep blood-under-nail color on the undersides. These were glued into a pressed bed area, trimmed in place and cuticles filled in with matte medium. I like how the light still shows through the nails.

I think I might use cut-up translucent drinking straws if I ever needed to do this job again. It would be tougher, less flexible, and remain curved/rounded over the bed area better than the paper.

This method works at any scale, as seen on these test hands for the stop-motion Kyra
seen wrapped around a paintbrush.