Striping tape fail.

I'm not a pro manicurist by any means. Don't ever think I am.

Here's proof. Tonight, I decided to try striping tape. I received Finger Paints... Art.... Something.... Hot pink in my first nail art society box this month (the rest of the box except a file and dotting tool was crap which was frustrating) and decided to try it out tonight.

I used Zoya -Arizona, a yummy orange sherbet cream color, as a base for two accent nails, and after they had dried for twenty minutes or so, I put on striking tape and then gave all of my nails two coats of the hot pink.

I let them dry another ten or fifteen minutes, and peeled the tape off slowly.

The results were disastrous.

Someone give me tips?

Water spotting during nap.

When I saw an online tutorial for water spotting your nails (kind of like marbling), I wanted to try it ASAP.

Today was the day! Yes, I was excited. I didn't want to do a super funky bright and bold combo, but rather a more muted lol and only on a few nails to test it out.

Enter Essie - Merino Cool (a dusty purple) and Zoya - Amanda.

I gave three fingers two coats of Amanda, a pink beige color. The rest got two coats of the Essie color. When Amanda was dry (haha), I taped off the skin around the nails, got out my medicine cup and a bottle of Victoria's Secret body must, filled the cup with warm water, put about five drops of Essie on the surface, then spritzed it with body spray. Chose a spot and dipped the taped nail (nail side down) into the polish floating on the water, waited for it to dry, swirled a toothpick to get the excess off, pulled the finger out and took off the tape. I did it two more times.

I let them dry and covered with NYC mate top coat (like I often do). The boys were both newly down for naps when I started the process which hadn't taken long at this point...

And as Murphy (think: law) would predict, Collin woke up prematurely and was irate.

So, my almost dry nails all got damaged.

I took a picture anyway, to show my first attempt. Lots of smudges and funny textures. Thanks, baby boy.

This would have looked great on Sunday. I have a shirt these colors I could have worn to church. Maybe I will try it again. We will see.


I think it would have worked better if the cup I used were a bit bigger and the spray must not quite so fine. I might try to just flick drops of diluted rubbing alcohol on it next time and hope for more and smaller holes in the polish.