Week 5 - Striped Nails

Week 5 of our mashed-up year-long challenge was to create striped nails. And when I was given these two Essie polishes by a generous colleague earlier this week I really wanted to try them out, and thought they would look pretty together!

My plan was to kind of create a striped green-lilac-green-lilac along my fingers, three stripes to each nail, using masking tape to create the lines. Here are the two colours before I added the stripes - pretty!

I love both these colours - I actually love them better like this, I wish I hadn't added anything extra, but I was attempting to fulfill the challenge! The colours are Navigate Her (the pale green) and To Buy Or Not To Buy (the lilac). I've really struggled to capture the true colours of these in my pics - and I took loads! They are really pale, but without a flash they look even paler and washed out, and with the flash they look way brighter. I've tried to pick the best three pics to use in this post!

To create the stripes, I began by putting two little pieces of masking tape down each nail, leaving a section down the middle.I added two coats of the contrasting colour, then removed the tape. However, the lines weren't very neat, and when I removed the tape it kind of distorted the lines between the colours, and they were not as crisp as I wanted. So I decided to freehand over them to tidy them up a bit. Still not happy at all! I love these colours, but don't like what I have done with them because it's not neaaat enouuugh arghhhh.
  I may try another design later this week using my striping tape, but I can't get the hang of keeping it neat when the tape is peeled off, whether I'm using masking or striping tape. I've read that it's best to do it when the polish is still wet, but this doesn't seem to go well for me either. Maybe I just need to practice!

I've also just bought some gorgeous CHEAP sparkly polishes from a discount shop in my town, which I'm dying to try out as well. Watch this space!