Friends experience: nail art

Posted on March 9, 2025 by lifewithclottedcream

The entrance to the Friends experience in London with a hand with painted nails in front.

Friends the tv series is still such a big part of my life. It is great to have in the background and I still laugh at some of the jokes!

Those that knows me very well, knows that my nails is my life’s canvas. Whichever event we are attending or movie we are seeing or country we are travelling to, I try to design my nail polish to match the event. Not only does it make for awesome pictures, but it also is like a diary for me – capturing my life ten fingers at a time.

These tickets were perfect for a design that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time: Friends nails! In the days following Christmas in the run-up to our experience day all I could think of was to refine the design. I am not an artist. I can’t draw a stick man let alone an intricate design on my nail with the wrong hand, but I had to give it a shot as I didn’t have any Friends plates.

I think I must’ve used every plate I own to create this set of nails. The only nail that I really couldn’t recreate using the tools I had was the golden frame. The frame is just too unique and iconic to even try to manipulate the images I have to create it. I also realised that from afar my nails look amazing, but it really doesn’t photograph well since there are quite a few smudges. No matter how much I try, the polish just doesn’t dry quick enough for my patience! I’ll give a description of each nail below.

Geller cup

I have thought long and hard about how to do this one. Initially I wanted to put the little troll on a plinth, however, since I suffer breakages quite often my nail wasn’t nearly long enough to even consider a plinth, however, I did paint the background grey to somewhat tie that in. Of course we all remember the Gellar cup for which Monica and Ross were banned from playing football. Monica fished it out of the water after their father threw it in the lake.

I created this image by using MoYou London’s Troll collection 05. I first stamped the entire little troll in white before layering the rest of the image in the different colours. I opted not to stamp the final layer that gave the nose and cheeks colour as this troll was supposed to have been through the wars and the colours would’ve faded by now.

London, baby!

The one where they are all in London must be one of my most favourite episodes. Growing up I have always dreamed of travelling (read about some of my travels here: Travel) and London has been a dream destination. Now that I live here I love the episode even more as I can relate to some of the touristy things that Joey and Chandler get up to.

I created this image by using one of the scenic images on MoYou London’s What the Plate collection 03. This plate is chockfull of fun British images.

These images was so very small and it was really difficult to stay within the lines. I chose the one with the umbrella to try and incorporate the umbrellas from the opening credits too.

The mixed tape

‘I love the way you look every night, Chandler Bing!’

Seeing Monica’s face when those words interrupts her favourite love song was priceless! I just had to try and get the mixed tape in there, however, I also wanted to do something with the very iconic ‘We were on a break!’ and so stamped the background full of broken hearts. I think I nailed the two scenes with this one design… (Yes, pun intended!)

I created this scene by first painting my nails with a beautiful romantic red before stamping the red broken hearts using an image from MoYou London’s Hipster collection 13. The tape is also from the Hipster collection, however, this one is from plate 03.

This whole design has smudged terribly and I had to redo it for a second time as the tape was simply unrecognisable.

The Friends logo

This one doesn’t need any introduction. I was lucky enough have a plate with letters that are very similar to the font that is used in Friends. I had hoped that I would be able to stamp the entire title on one nail, but unfortunately the letters was just too big.

I used the MoYou London Scholar collection 06 to stamp the letters. I made the dots using a dotting tool.

The cheesecake with Joey’s fork

This is one episode that I absolutely adore. That moment when Joey comes up the stairs and sits on the step you know that he is just interested in that cheesecake. The fact that he has a fork in his pocket shouldn’t come as a surprise but it is still hilarious!

The cheesecake image is actually supposed to be a pumpkin pie, but I suppose it all depends on the colours you use. I’ve used the layered pie image on MoYou London’s Fall in Love collection 13. The fork is from the MoYou London Cookbook collection 12 image plate.

I love this design so much!

Central Perk

It would’ve been awesome if I could recreate the Central Perk logo, but alas I am not an artist! However, this coffee image looked very similar to one of the coffee cup images that I have seen on the show. To ensure that I know that this is supposed to be all about the coffee, I stamped a very light background of coffee words before stamping the coffee cup over the top.

In hindsight I should’ve used some more colour and not just white and green, but I think it turned out ok. It is my least favourite design.

He’s her lobster!

Is it just me or does Phoebe’s description of the lobster couple made total sense?! You know, when the two old lobsters walk around the tank holding claws…

For this design I made the background blue to represent the water in the tank and the lobster is from MoYou London’s Cookbook collection 12. Funny that I used the same image and concept for my nail design for the Royal Wedding.

This nail kept smudging and after the third try I just gave up. I don’t really think the smudge took away from the design when it was just at a glance. It looked far worse on the picture than it did in reality.

Gold frame

This gold frame on the back of Monica’s door became the symbol that is Friends. Without this frame, the whole design will simply fall flat and will not have the same impact in my mind.

Since I didn’t have anything that remotely resembled this frame in my arsenal of plates, I had to recreate it. I searched for some clipart pictures of the frame on my phone and chose one that felt manageable for me to try and copy. This simply didn’t work as I just couldn’t get the contours painted with a brush. I realised that I have a silicone mat that is translucent and that if I place my phone underneath that I was able to trace the frame using a forgotten nail art pen. Of course this worked only up until the point that I had to pick up the design and realised that none of the clear polishes I have is strong enough to peel – they all cracked. I gave it a last go with a very sticky, unusable on nails Seche Vite and it worked a charm! Once cured the design picked up beautifully and I managed to place it on a silicone stamper head to colour it gold and apply it to my nail. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time on a nail design before!

P.I.V.O.T!

Ross’ stinginess is very evident in this iconic scene where he forced Rachel and Chandler to help him deliver his sofa to his apartment because he didn’t want to fork out for the deliver charge from the store he bought it. It turned out he lost out in anyway as the sofa didn’t pivot and they ended up cutting it in half…

Since I have swiftly ran out of nails I couldn’t do an orange couch as well so I decided to combine the two scenes and make the background this burnt orange colour from the Central Perk sofa and the word PIVOT in the foreground.

For the word I used MoYou London’s Scholar collection 06.