My first tape manicure attempt

Hi everyone :)

I hope you enjoyed your weekend ;) Today I'll show you my very first attempt at tape manicures. It's far from being perfect, I have to get used to that technique to avoid mistakes, but I liked it enough to show it to you.

First, let me introduce you a blog that inspires me a lot, Chloe's Nails. She makes great tape manis and has some tutorials that helped me to get started. I also love to visit Blue Tape & Nail Tips, she made me discover blue tape and has nice designs.

But on to my attemps. I wanted something simple for my first experiment. I chose to paint may nails in black with Essence Berlin Story and make a blue accent nail with China Glaze Secret Peri-Winkle, layered with OPI Last Friday Night. Then I applied some blue tape diagonally on the accent nail, and painted the black stripes with Essence Berlin Story again.

I'm not really proud of it, as you can see I didn't verify if the tape was well stuck on my nails, that's why I have those unpretty wavy lines :(

But now I know that, I can provide you some tips:

- your base polish has to be totally dry. Do the tape mani the next day, or apply a fast drying top coat like Seche Vite, or your base color will adhere to the tape when you remove it.
- verify the tape is well stuck, especially near the cuticles, with an orange stick or tooth pick. Bad stuck tape will result in something like I had in the pic above, you don't want that :p
- remove the tape stripes immediatly after a nal is done, if you wait for it to dry the polish will comme with the tape.

You can use any type of tape for this, but I prefer blue painter tape because ... it's blue ! Unless you use a dark blue polish, the blue tape makes it easier (imo) to see what you're doing. It's easy to find in any shop that sell painting material.

Well, here are some more pics, I took a close shot of my thumb 'cause it was better done than the ring nail :) (the gliters on it are from China Glaze Shooting Stars, I wanted to try it then)

I haven't show you that black polish yet, it's from Essence I Love Berline LE. It maybe my favourite black, it has a good coverage and dries fast despite it's a bit thick. I love to use it for nail art, french manis and tape manis, but it was the first time I used it as an almost full mani :)

So, what's your advice?
Have you ever tried tape manicures or do you plan to try it ?

Have a nice day :)