Today's mani is a mint green funky french in honor of St. Patrick's Day. My base color was 2 coats of Sally Hansen Green Tea, which is a slightly dusty mint green. This one can be problematic, and I did notice a little bit of dragging and streaking during the first coat which (mostly) improved on the second coat. I did still have a little bare spot on my index finger, which I chose to leave alone with just a topcoat rather than adding a third coat of color. (You know how sometimes the more you overwork something the more noticeable the mistake becomes?)
I taped off my tips and added Zoya Verushka. Verushka is a simply gorgeous forest green matte polish with little flecks in it. I really wanted the contrast of the matte tips with the glossy base, so I did not apply a topcoat over this step.
Then I tried out the nail striping tape I got from Dollar Nail Art. The tape comes with a slightly sticky back, but I wasn't sure it was enough to hold it down so I applied a thin coat of a slow drying topcoat to the back and pressed it onto the nail. After you apply it you use cuticle nippers to trim the tape to fit the nail (please be careful with this step as nippers are very sharp and I actually took a tiny bit of nail off the sides of couple fingers!)
Have any of you ever used nail striping tape before? Keep reading for my experience with it...
Elegant isn't it? I just loved how this looked. Below is a pic of what it looked like before I applied the tape.
And here is Green Tea by itself
So shortly after I applied the tape I noticed the ends lifting. So I took a tiny bit of SV and applied it under the ends to stick it back down. No Bueno - it wouldn't hold. So I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and just topcoat over the entire mani and headed to the beach for lunch. You would think the topcoat would seal the tape in... Nope. the tape continued to pull up at the ends on several fingers throughout the day. I wore this mani about 5 hours and it looked like this...
I could not wait to get home and remove it. So sad - I really liked this one too! So what is your experience with striping tape?
