purple

I was excited when I saw that Polish Alcoholic had posted this great tutorial on a design I first saw her do (and absolutely loved!) in the Pre-Spring challenge. I finally had a free afternoon when I wasn’t following a challenge so I decided to give it a try.

It wasn’t a difficult technique but that doesn’t mean it was easy to get it looking perfect and mine is nowhere near as neat as Polish Alcoholic’s. I also did mine in a regular pattern which on reflection wasn’t a good idea – I should have done the colours more randomly as I ended up with a kind of cloud manicure effect.

It’s a great design though and I’m glad I tried it! I might have a go with different colours next time rather than all shades of one colour, maybe some nice pastels.

I used: Do You Lilac It? – OPI, 2007 – Bourjois, Impulsive – Revlon, Prom-berry – Essence

I have never really liked using tape but I thought if I finally bought some proper striping tape all that might change – as it’s mainly the cutting up little pieces of tape which frustrates me. So I bought one of those cheap cheap packs off eBay and they arrived the other day.

I didn’t want to do anything too difficult for my first attempt at using striping tape so after a quick search I found this design with three bands of colour by superwowstyle on YouTube.

It took me far longer than I had imagined and the result wasn’t as neat as I’d hoped for but I did like the effect.

However – I was seriously unimpressed with my tape as my manicure looked good for a couple of hours and then the tape started to peel off… (I know, I know – what kind of quality did I expect for 40 rolls of tape for £1.99… But still!) I tried adding an extra layer of topcoat but nothing I could do would get it to stick down again, so it was a case of getting a decent photo and using the tape only for masking in future and not as decoration.