Stamping Sunday: Easter Mani with Tutorial on Tape

For my Easter (or Bunny-Chicken Day as I call it) manicure, I wanted to try to do classy eggs on my fingers.  The plan was to use a combination of tape, dots, and stamping to achieve this. Well, it kinda went alright.

I figured I would start with a short tutorial about tape manicures with curved or zig zag lines.

These are French Tip guides and come in small sheets like this. They are PERFECT for any curved lines you may not want to freehand.

Just peel one up (easier to do this with an orange stick as pictured) and place them after your manicure has had time to sit for probably 15-20 minutes. Yes, you may want to put a quick dry top coat on before this but you still need to make sure your base coat is rock hard (no dents or fingerprints when you press on it) before doing a tape mani.

Here is my zig zag tape. I cut a pattern with scissors and then (the MAGIC TRICK) I patted my hand with the tape until it was less sticky. Not UNsticky, but LESS sticky. Then stick it on your nail.

BASE:

Julep Vera on thumb, China Glaze Secret Periwinkle on index, Sinful Vacation Time on middle, Sinful Open Seas and Verbena on ring, orange franken on pinky

Line them up!

Make sure that you seal the tape. Trimming helps on the parts close to the side skin. 

On the pink finger, do you notice that the top part has rounded edges instead of a clean line to the edge? This is due to the tape not sticking all the way down. I should have trimmed it! I did it on purpose so you could see that......................uh huh.

Also, I reused the zig zag tape three times! If you peel up the tape while the mani is still wet, you will get a better line because the polish won't be sticky and tacky and peel off uneven. While it is wet has *always* been better for me. Just lift it off STRAIGHT UP! You do not want to wiggle the tape around. Just pull it up in one easy motion, quickly but neatly. It takes practice. 

And notice that I did not use striping tape this time. I wanted a curved line, like a decorated egg. You cannot easily achieve this with striping tape. And a striping tape zig zag will make you cry, trust me. Each kind of tape is good for different things!! 

After everything was decorated, this is what I ended up with. The middle finger got out of control! I couldn't stop trying to fix it by adding more dots. Oh well, now I know that I should always

DRAW OUT MY DESIGN

I have to go write that on a piece of paper 100 times :O