Beach Stripes nails tutorial

 Today's nail is a very very simple look to achieve with your striping tape. For lots of beach related items and structures, like parasols, towels or dressing rooms, I always see these wide stripes in white and a saturated colour, so I wanted to give it a try!

You can see a couple of mistakes but I will point at its reasons as we go, so you can do as I say, and not as I do. The first mistake is the polish selection:

The mistake is using a not very opaque in one coat green, actually. It's a great polish, don't get me wrong, specially for the price point, but it needs those two coats. This polishes are:

• Deliplus Base Nº860
• Wild & Young (previously known as Pinkduck) XOX Nº11

Let's start painting our nail with the white, as it will always be the lightest shade, and apply a quick dry top coat. Let dry:

 You can see that on the corner there's a little dent on my nail. That will come to play in a min. The next step involves striping tape. I got many years ago a set that includes 6 different shades of iridescent striping tape in 3 different sizes. The widest one is about 2mm wide, and that's what I used for this nail. You will see in the pictures that is a little bit thick for other uses or for encasing. I used a colour I know I will not want to use on my nails that much, in this case, it was iridescent yellow-orange:

 

These swatch sticks are quite unnaturally curved in the base, so sticking them in place was difficult. That will make this process harder, but don't rush it. Also, be sure to leave a somewhat generous lip outside of the nail to remove it easier, either with tweezers or your fingers. Try to make the gaps between the stripes the same width as the tape itself. A method to achieve it is to place a whole nail of tape stripes and then peel every other one, but my nail, as I said, was too curved.

If you're avid, you can also see that the stripe on the right cannot lie flat. That's an issue of the little dent I was talking about previously. Do the best job you can, and then paint over it with your second colour. I did a thick coat due to opacity issues, which resulted in some bleeding. Peel your tape carefully but quickly, don't wait for it to start drying!

As I said, minor bleeding issues generally and a big mess on that section to the right due to the scrape on the surface. If something like this happens, have your clean up brush ready, with minimal acetone, and carefully make those edges sharp. Let dry generously before applying your top coat! That will level your layers and help seal it properly!

This look is deceptively simple. Making straight lines is not easy, but nail vinyls or striping tape will help achieve this without precision work... after applying them properly. My best advice is to not rush its application. If the tape is not applied where you want it, you can't expect the lines to be how you want them!

I will see you next week with another nail tutorial, which one? Who knows! Suggest!