Fishtail plaited nails!

Hello!

I seem to be really into following other bloggers' tutorials and recreating looks at the moment, mainly due to the awesomeness of designs I'm seeing. I totally loved my Ikat nails from my last post, I only changed them because one chipped, and I wanted something less bright for work (again- failed! these are so bright! I don't know how I thought that this pink and orange, that are practically neon, could be subtle...) For my nails today, I followed a tutorial by the super-talented Claire over at nuthin' but a nail thing: click here!

I picked three of my favourite gelly Barry M shades to work with, Lychee (nude), Papaya (orange) and Grapefruit (pink). I thought the gelly polishes would work well because you get great coverage in just one coat, which is kinda vital for this method. I started with a base of lychee as it's quite light, then began following Claire's steps, painting each strand of the plait on each nail one by one, then swapping colours and doing the next strand etc. 
In progress:

I found the method really simple! It took quite a while but that's no problem if you're chilling out in front of the telly. As the gelly dries quite quickly, I didn't have to wait between 'strands', by the time I'd done each nail with one colour, when I started back at the first nail with the next colour they were dry enough. The only tricky part is keeping each section evenly spaced, and making sure the 'plait' doesn't lean to one side. They are a little wonky, but hopefully not too noticeable if you don't look closely! 
I had to clean up quite a bit around the edges, and then finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri. I think if I was to do this again, I'd pick three completely different colours. From a distance, I think the pink and orange kind of merge into one. 

With flash:

Without:

other hand: