Drawing straight lines in manicures is something that we can barely handle on a piece of paper, let alone on nails. Especially on our "wrong" hand... you know the one you have to paint with the one that can barely just do a solid color, let alone do a design. And you know we all love anything that helps us make manicures easy, like how to make a french manicure easy or getting the gradient look easily! So, we had to get to the bottom of drawing straight lines and stripes on our nails and tape just wasn't cutting it for more intricate designs. So, we found the manicurists secret: striping tape. We bought 20 tiny little rolls of striping tape for manicues for $3.50 (including shipping and tax). They arrive in a small envelope from China and each roll looks like it will last few puh-lenty of manicures! We won't be running out anytime soon and we WILL be bringing you tons of manicure ideas with striping tape.
To find and purchase it, look for nail tape or striping tape for manicures. We bought our tape here: ebay seller: wugaonian because of the positive ratings and we were definitely pleased with our service.
Step 1: paint a base coat and let dry completely. Ours is steel grey, although it looks black in the photo. Step 2: place the striping tape where you want the line to be Step 3: paint the 2nd color and let it dry. Do not worry if a little gets on the tape! The beauty of the tape is when you peel it off, the color that is on the tape also peels off. Step 4: we used the dark grey and silver to show the drama a simple straight line can give to a manicure, without having to get too fancy.
Another idea is to leave the tape on the nail and cut it at the edge. This looks especially crisp with silver or white! We were inspired by a Tiffany box and imagined a white bow wrapping up a nice piece of jewelry inside. :roll:
Other quick manicure ideas include placing tape down the middle of the nail (pinky), using it at the tip as in a straight line French manicure (ring), offsetting it towards the tip and using it to make stripes and then using a matte coat on top (pointer). There are zillions of ideas and we'll keep playing with our nail tape and bring you more fun manicure ideas! These are JUST THE BASICS to get you started :)
Some 2-color combos we think would look great: army green and grey, navy and dark coral, orange and grey... and the list goes on and on. Enjoy & we'll have more designs soon!