I'm very nearly at the end of my 30 Day of Nails challenge (all NOTD here) so I thought for the last few days I would try some new things out!
For today's nails I decided to buy some gold Striping Tape from eBay as I have seen many nail bloggers use this for french manicures and other different things. So I thought I would give it a go!
Sadly I failed to realise how long this would take me to do and I should of just opted for a spring slant on the classic french manicure (I think this would actually be really great to conceal wonky lines if you aren't go good at french tips). But once I had started I was determined to finish all 10 nails which did actually take me over an hour!
However I am still SO glad that I bought the striping nail art tape as I know I can use it for all sorts of nail related things. I actually bought the silver and gold striping tape as a set from an eBay seller for only 99p plus free delivery! You can find the listing here. Like most nail art supplies on eBay the item was from Hong Kong so I was expecting it to wait awhile for it to arrive but surprisingly delivery took only 10 days!
The tape is very easy to use with it having a sticky backing so you can cut it and just stick it directly onto the nails if you wish. However like sellotape finding the end is a nightmare... I swear this is why my nails took so long to do, as I kept on losing the end of the tape!
How I achieved my stripey nails...
To be honest I did find it more tricky than I thought it would be... basically I took on too much for my first ever attempt at using the striping tape. But here is how I did it.
1. First paint your nails and let them fully dry. Now I mean fully dry as you may need to reposition your tape and so you don't want the polish to be pulled up by the tape if it isn't totally dry.
2. Next you want to roughly pre-cut all your strips of tape and stick the edges of them on to something that you have close by. If like me you are doing stripes then you will want 4 pieces of tape per nail so you will need to cut 40 pieces in total. Trust me, cutting them all in one go will save you time. My two tips for cutting the pieces would be to give yourself more length than you think you will need and also don't cut the tape at an angle as this will mean you will need to cut the tape twice when it's on the nail.
3. With each nail I started at the tip, using were my nail mets up with my skin as a kind of guideline for my first stripe. I then place down the tape on to my nail with the edge of the tape lining up with the left side of my nail so that I didn't need to cut that side. Then when I was happy with the position of the tape I pressed it down.
4. Next with the edge of a pair of tweezers I just lightly pressed them down on the right hand side of my nail giving me an indentation mark which would be my guideline of were I needed to cut the tape. You could however use a pen just to mark this instead.
5. For the last step I then lifted the tape part way off my nail again and cut the excess off at the indentation I had made. I then of course repeated this for each stripe... which is why my nails took so long to do!
Of course four stripes per nails is not only time consuming but also faffy! So you could maybe do this as just an accent on both ring finger nails or just a single stripe across each nail as a modern take on the french manicure. Or you could even place a single piece of tape vertically down each nail.
Basically you can do so much with striping tape!
Fee xo.
