fishtail

Fingerfood’s Theme Buffet: Fishtail

I was looking forward to this week’s theme buffet as I love the fishtail design and always enjoy having it on my nails. I wanted to use some bright and summery colours now the weather is getting nice and warm and I’ve spent the last week by the beach. I also decided to try a fine stranded fishtail rather than the chunky bands of colour I usually use. I liked the result but it took much longer than usual and I got a bit bored towards the end! Maybe a fine fishtail is best saved for an accent nail rather than every finger!

I used: I Just Can’t Cope-Acabana – OPI, Def Defying – China Glaze, Hopscotch – Ciaté

GOT Polish: Skittles

I’m really pleased with this one and loved having it on my nails for a day! I decided to do a skittles mani using three of my very favourite polishes with different techniques on each nail.

Some of these are techniques I’ve loved from the very first time I tried them, namely water-marbling and gradients. I do a lot of gradients because it’s an effect I really love.

Striping tape, on the other hand, is one of my most hated techniques as I frequently mess it up. So I’m absolutely thrilled to have succeeded this time with relatively clean and straight lines! A couple of weeks ago I promised myself I’d work on striping tape manis and improve my skills – this is step one! Look out for more striping tape nail art coming up!

Stamping is the newest technique for me and I only own a couple of stamping plates. It might not be a perfect stamp, but at the moment I’m happy just to get the polish picked up and relocated to my nail!

This mani put a big smile on my face today even though it’s been a long and tiring week.

I used: Baker Street – Nails Inc, For Audrey – China Glaze, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI.

Tri Polish Tuesday: Brown, Pink and Grey Fishtail

It’s been ages since I last did a fishtail braid design. It’s a style I love because it’s so simple to do and looks so good – as if you’ve done something much more complicated and requiring far more skill than this mani needs in reality!
I really love the colour combination in this one and think it’s the first time I’ve really got the February Tri Polish colours to work for me. I think the dusky pink and the grey go especially together and the gorgeous shimmery brown gives a nice pop! The pink was a bit sheer so you can see through to the layer underneath a bit, but hopefully it doesn’t detract from the overall effect.

I used: Shag – Butter London, Artificial Sweetener – Orly, Miss Grey – GOSH

April 30 Day Challenge Day 12: Fishtail Braid

I’d tried the fishtail manicure once before and loved the result so I was keen to have another go when I saw it was part of the April challenge. I wanted to do something a bit different with this one so it wasn’t just a repeat of last time and decided to try it with textured polishes. I wasn’t sure if it would work or if it would become too thick – it turned out quite well and I don’t think the texture made it much more difficult than a normal fishtail. I used all Kiko Sugar Mat polishes so they all had a similar consistency and thickness so that probably helped.

I’m quite pleased with them and must find some more creative ways of using my textured polishes.