Blue and Turquoise nails inspired by Margaret :)

I say inspired, I should say, replicated! Hey guys! Another fun post today :) One of my first nail buddies and friend Margaret of @m_a_tom is having a contest celebrating a milestone for her account! The rules are it's not a giveaway, its a contest. You have to do an inspired by (or replicate) mani of hers for your entry. She is my tape-spiration FOR SURE and the one who encouraged me to stop being afraid of striping tape and go for it. The rest is history! Who knew it would become my favorite technique! And she's Australian so obvious bonus points for that ;)

I peeped her feed and narrowed it down to 3, then this one. Again, grateful for  a design not to be on all fingers!!! I also had the 3 same polishes she used...lucky me.




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Polishes used: OPI Eurso Euro and Wharf! Wharf! Wharf!, and China Glaze For Audrey



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I did actually take a couple pics of the process because I thought ya'll might find it amusing...but this is not a tutorial in any way!

First off....get all the pieces of striping tape cut and ready, plus a few extra. Mine is not the same width all the way around...talk about infuriating.




the lineup

After much deliberation I decided to tape all of both nails first. That way I wouldn't have to worry about smudging the second one when I was done with the first. I decided to mark the middles first for symmetry. Also...when I do tape I hold my fingers like this so I can get a good Idea of alignment, instead of flat down on the desk, does that make sense?



step one

Let the breath holding and eyes crossing begin...



keep going...

One down...



almost there...

Done! Time to fill in.



all done

OK. The only time I had an issue was the first section I filled in with a dotting tool instead of just painting over, for fear of seepage. Stupid me, doing that doesn't allow you to take the tape off quickly enough, plus with a goopy polish like For Audrey, I was doomed. All the stringys result. I used my new Winstonia angled brush to clean up the lines and they eventually came out ok.



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Little topcoat and wa-la!



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I would say I'm 97% happy with these, which is a pretty high satisfactory rate for me. They lose one point for sloppy lines on the first nail, one point for me not having studs so using polish to free hand the diamonds and dots, and one point for that squiggly line mess happening on my middle finger. Otherwise, I  love them!

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