Mani Monday's: Stripes

Another Monday has arrived and that means it's time for another Mani Monday. This weeks theme is Stripes.

Well, if you've read my earlier attempts to create stripes on my nails (click here for my epic big fat failure), you know I don't have the best track record when it comes to this particular art type...
In fact, I've had such a hard time with striping tape, I actually considered skipping this weeks theme, but that would feel like cheating. Especially since I allready skipped last weeks theme. Of course not because I've never had a French mani on my nails, let alone a Fancy French, so I have no clue how to do a French mani, but because I was on holiday! (hence the very limited posting of the last week or so)

After a lot of sighing and trying to figure out how to get stripes on my nails without tape, I gave up and got out my striping tape. This time it gave me only a mild headache so I'm happy. The result is... well... wobbly is the best way to describe it, but hey, you can definitely tell I have stripes on my nails and that was the whole idea!

I decided to use two untried polishes in my stash that, in my opinion, go great together. I started with 1 coat of China Glaze Phat Santa.

A bright red crelly, that leans a little more to the cream side. I really didn't expect it to be so opaque, but look at this:

Not bad for just one coat, right? This polish is great to work with, a little thin, so be carefull not to flood your cuticles, but really opaque and it dries really fast.

I then began my battle with the sticky striping tape. To start of with, I of course couldn't find the start of my tape... Half an hour later I finally found it and cut of the pieces. Placing them on my nails was actually really easy after that! When I was happy with my (simple) design, I added the second layer of polish, China Glaze Naughty and Nice, a really deep, dark, vampy bloodred crelly polish. It was also a little on the thin side, but I think that's what you get with a jelly or crelly... I don't know how opaque this polish is on its own, as I've never used it on it's own, but I used just 1 coat for this mani, because I had a fairly opaque base color underneath.

The beautiful twosome, Naughty looks black in the bottle, but trust me, it's not! It really is gorgeous and perfect for fall/winter.

This time I let the polish dry completely before taking off the tape and I think this works a lot better than leaving my polish a little wet. But my striping tape mani is never complete with a little (or big) mistake, so of course I bumped my pinky before I could take some swatch pictures... I really didn't feel like doing the whole thing again, so I opted to ignore my sowewhat ugly pinky. I hope you will too.

Have you ever used striping tape? What is the best way to use it and how do I get straight, sharp lines?

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