31 Day Challenge - Day 13 - Tape Manicure - Candy Corn

11:00:00 AM

Well hello there! Today is Day 13, or Day 2984928 of the 31 Inspired Days of Nail Art Challenge. I say it is that many days because it's starting to feel like it since I decided to post every 3 days. I'm not complaining, I'm super happy that it's spread out because it is less stress, but goodness it seems like I've been doing it for awhile! Seriously though, I would NOT have ever been able to do this for 31 days straight in a row. I do not know how other bloggers do it. I guess that's why it's a challenge.

Anyways, today is the Tape Manicure day...one of the days which we came up with ourselves because we didn't like Water Marbling. Yup, a lot of us girls are very anti-marbling here in the blogger world. Me being one of them. I will never waste my polish on a marble as long as I blog. After this manicure, I'm very anti-tape. I've always been against tape manicures because I stink at them. Despite the fact I have used quick dry top coat in between layers, I still have polish ripping off. Then I end up with one messy, thick manicure. And you know what, it's not pretty, I hate it, and I complain for days when looking at my nails.

Since I wanted to be a happy girl during the time I wore this manicure, I kind of cheated. Only one nail was done with tape. Yup, I was an awful, horrible, challenge cheater. To be honest, if I used tape, it may have been nicer looking, but whatever, we will never know because I'm not going back and taping up ten nails and trying. Deal with it :P.

To stick with my attempt to correlate the challenge with Halloween nails, I decided to do everyone's favorite Halloween candy, Candy Corn!!!! Okay maybe it isn't everyone's favorite, but whatever. Wish I got better pictures, but it was raining and by the next day these were chipped =/

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
Sinful Colors - Country Orange
Sinful Colors - Let's Meet
NYC Matte Me Crazy

Since this is tape day, I will explain how to do this manicure with tape (dramatically), then how I did it without (no drama).

To get the look with tape, you first start off with a base of white polish. When the white is completely dried for an eternity or after you applied a quick dry top coat and waited a good 5 minutes, you tape off the top section of your nail leaving a tip at the bottom section open for polishing. You then paint the yellow polish of your choice as a French Tip. Next, carefully take off the tape and pray that your white polish didn't come ripping off on said tape. Then, add some more quick dry top coat, wait 5 minutes or an eternity, and tape off the yellow and the top part of your nail. Personally, I would not tape off the yellow part and just be super careful when painting in the orange, but sometimes people prefer taping off both to ensure they don't slip up. Paint in the middle area with your orange polish, pray, take tape off. Add some more top coat, and you are done.

I did this manicure by painting on a french tip with my yellow polish. Then when that was dried, with my nail art brush, I outlined the orange midsection, and then filled it in with the polish brush. Once dried, I added on my matte top coat and was done.

See, tape is evil and more time consuming. Also consumes some of your quick dry top coat, which to a broke girl, is like gold. I feel like my challenge post has turned into "I hate tape manicure" and "Tape is evil" subliminal message/rant post.

If you are going to use tape, my suggestion to you would be to first make the tape less sticky. If you stick the tape on your hand a couple of times before placing it onto the nail, it will make the tape less sticky. It is gross that it does so by taking off some of your dry skin, but hey if it doesn't rip your polish off, it isn't too nasty. Doing this is usually the only way my tape manicures work for me.

Well, I'm going to hush up now. What do you think of my candy corns?? Will you try them? If so, will you do them with tape or free hand them? Can you tell which nail I did with tape? I'll never tell hehehe

Do not forget to check out the other lovely ladies who I am sure used tape and didn't cheat like me!!!