Tuesday, August 20, 2013

31 Day Nail Art Challenge - Day 12: Stripes

I can't believe we're already on day 12 of this challenge! I'm so happy that Meghan and I are sticking with this - I'm still really loving this challenge :) 

For today's stripes theme, I thought about doing something complex with striping tape and going crazy, but in the end, I settled on classic vertical stripes. I recently bought the China Glaze Avant Garden collection and I've kind of been obsessing over the colors since I got them. I used 38 strips of striping tape for this hand alone and I felt my eye start to twitch in frustration after about the 12th strip being placed on my nail! How is it that the tape suddenly acquired a magnetic attraction to my nails for this mani!? 

I don't normally like vertical stripes on myself, but I think I like how these turned out. They sort of remind me of Candy Striper stripes! The colors are subtle enough that it still feels "right" if you will. I'm so relieved that there was little to no bleeding of the colors in the stripes. My secret for fixing any bleeding under the tape is to use a top coat over your base color. This lets you use a brush and some acetone to carefully remove any misplaced nail art polish without taking up the base polish and having to restart. 

I used 7 China Glaze polishes for this look and I'll share them from the darkest/brightest pink up to the darkest blue/purple stripe. 
Base Color - Keep Calm, Paint on
Brightest/Darkest Pink - Passion for Petals
Life is Rosy
Pink-ie Promise
Tart-y For the Party
Fade into Hue
Fancy Pants
I really love these colors together and while this is a super simple look, it took me a long while to get my tape where I wanted it. How do you guys feel about major tape manis like this? Worth it or would you rather forgo the insipid task of taping this much and attempt some freehand? ;) 

Happy Polishing! :)