Rainbow Stripes

I can't believe this is the last day off work... I've to go back tomorrow! No more painting nails daily... boohoo. The next few weeks are probably going to be a bit tough, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do a lot of nail art... We will see.

For today, I want to show a mani, I have been inspired to do by a post on Pinterest. I'm pretty sure most of you have seen it! It's not difficult to do, but takes a little bit of patience. I finally had the patience last saturday, sat down and did some rainbow nails!

 I did these in two steps. First, I painted my nails with the rainbow, let that dry over night and continued with the taping the next morning. That's what I mean with patience. I'd normally start taping the same night, eventually do it too early and end up pulling the base off with the tape. Hah! Didn't happen this time!

Rainbow on my left hand

Rainbow on my right hand

I used nine different polishes on my left hand, following the suggested shades from my Pinterest inspiration. I wasn't sure if it didn't end up being too much on the pink side, so I skipped those two shades on my right hand. Totally different, right?
I didn't try to do perfect stripes. They are going to be covered up mostly anyway.

This is how my right hand looked after finishing with the taping. It's bolder, less delicate than the my left hand. I still liked it better than my left hand though. It kept looking too pink to me. Well, until I felt like mattifying it.

After I mattified this mani, I suddenly liked my left hand a lot better! It's like the pink took a step backward. And, overall, I definitely liked this mani the best after I mattified it. Both hands, I mean.

I certainly have to practice with the tape, alignment and stuff. And I should get a new bottle of p2 eternal. Lots of the mistakes in this mani are due to the fact that it got a bit old... stringy... and just wouldn't do what I wanted it to do.

Lastly, there's another rainbow here. They just looked so pretty when I had them all next to each other while painting my stripes. I couldn't resist taking a picture the next day. :D

I hope everybody's week gets off to a good start! Until next time!

Spring Challenge 5: A Rainbow after the Rain

...fail... lol

Hm, I was thinking about what to do for the rainbow theme and some polishes or techniques I hadn't used yet. I had done some gradient sponging already, so that was out. I didn't feel like painting rainbows either. Then I remembered the striping tape I bought a while ago... still unused. I had enough colors to do a rainbow, so I went with that.

First of all, I painted three layers of essie Marshmallow as my base. It took forever to dry as always. Then, I cut my striping tape and applied it. After cutting the edges, I applied 2 coats of essence BTGN Top Sealer to smooth everything out. It is pretty smooth actually. So far, so good. Since I did this late at night, I was quite tired and decided to go to sleep and take pictures the next morning. That was my mistake.

When I woke up, I had to find out that my topcoat had melted the colors of the striping tape, leaving silver tape with a hint of color around the edges. All that was left from the quite bold colors of the original rainbow was a pastel rainbow. For some reason, the topcoat had also heavily bubbled on top of the striping tape. :( The original colors were violet, dark blue, green, yellow, red...

I'll try again with some other top coat, but if it's happening again, I'll probably have the throw it away, or use if for tape manis only. Did anyone else experience something similar?

Here are the links to the other wonderful ladies participating in the Spring Challenge:

Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More!
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish 
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine at Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Sarah from All This Polish
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

Tape Mani...

Quick post for now.

This is my second take on the tape manicure. I recently clicked through a few amazing blogs that also featured extremely well done tape manis. They really inspired me, so I thought I had to try this again.

essence - My Yellow Fellow & p2 - passion

It turned out better than my first try, but I'm still not happy with it. I did this in the evening... I probably would have chosen different colors if it were daylight still. I didn't really pay attention to the width of the tape I was using so the pattern is not really consistent, which is also a reason I didn't really like it. The stripes aren't really smooth either... but luckily, that wasn't too noticeable while working. But I was impatient too... applied the top coat to fast, so the color dragged.

I wore this for like 2 days... It felt like removing it after one day, but didn't have the time to do a new mani. I kind of felt like wearing warning tape on my nails... bleh.