I’ve been a Madness fan since the very beginning (1979), and while my musical taste in general leans more indie, I have remained true to my first musical love for 35 years. I went to see them on Saturday night at the O2, for the final gig of their current UK tour and so decided to paint my nails in tribute to the Nutty Boys.

I started off with a base of white, then stamped a 2Tone checked pattern on all my nails except my middle finger. I used a Cheeky plate, CH3, and Konad Black. I had to fill in some of the sides and some tiny missing spots with black acrylic paint, and I didn’t get the stamp very straight on the index finger, but apart from that, I was really impressed with how this stamped.

The M logo is hand painted using acrylic paint, and the crown above it – which isn’t completely accurate to the band’s logo – was done using a stamping decal and Bundle Monster BM-215. I tried just stamping it regularly at first, but it was off centre and crooked. It looked hilarious! Luckily, it came off OK with some judicious brushing with a tiny brush and some acetone. My second attempt, using the decal method where you leave the image on the stamper and then top-coat it, worked perfectly though.

I top-coated these using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, and some of the black squares smudged. I remembered that HK Girl is far better on stamping and used that on my right hand. It didn’t matter at the time as it wasn’t at all noticeable, but on the Sunday, when I took some photos, I could really see the smears and it aggravated me so much that I went back and touched them all up with white acrylic paint before photographing them again. I even re-did some of the black lines that I’d added in with acrylic paint to make them crisper. I’m such a perfectionist, but most of the time, even with reading glasses, my ageing eyes can’t see the imperfections until I view the photos on a large computer monitor!