Christmas Nails: Stripes & Confetti

It’s my first day of my holiday break and, of course, I’m sick with a cold! I woke up yesterday all congested and was able to get through the work day with some sniffles but otherwise surviving. But as soon as I got home I was blowing my nose every 5 minutes and sitting next to a tissue box. I’m hoping it passes quickly because I don’t want to be sick on my days off! I guess it was only a matter of time because I’ve been so busy with work that my body was bound to give out by the end of the year.

Onto happier news – I’m sharing my Christmas manicure that I gave myself a few nights ago.

I used:

• OPI – Alpine Snow
• Sephora Formula X – Fiery
• Sephora OPI – Good Tidings We Bling
• Revlon Colorstay Gel Envy – High Stakes
• Revlon Top Coat
• Nail Striping Tape

Yes, I use Good Tidings We Bling every Christmas but with a polish that features red and green sparkles/confetti pieces there are few times a year I can really wear it! I bought a set of nail striping tape from Amazon recently and it’s the best thing I’ve bought in a long time! It’s amazing! I’ve seen people using it on blogs and on YouTube for a long time but I never got it myself. I’ve done a few designs using good ol’ scotch tape but striping tape is so much better for finer detailed looks. Plus you don’t have to peel it off if you want to do the kind of look where you leave the tape on (trimmed to fit perfectly) to create a metallic design on your nail.

Anyway, I first painted all my nails white. After that dried I carefully put 4 strips of the tape on my ring and middle fingers. I made sure to really press it down so that when I painted over it it wouldn’t lift.

I painted my middle fingers green over the tape and my ring fingers with the red polish. Since I wanted those fingers to completely dry before peeling the tape I then used this opportunity to put the confetti polish on my remaining fingers. When the episode of The Crown that I was watching was over (my thoughts on that Netflix hit coming in an upcoming post!) I peeled off the tape, hoping the result would be neat, clean lines. I have had bad experiences with tape before (regular tape). I was ecstatic to find the lines to be clean, neat, and crisp! I used a top coat to seal it all in and voila!

I’m really happy with how this nail look turned out. Good Tidings We Bling always looks good, especially over white polish, but the red and green striped accent nails just make this look extra special in my opinion. I can’t wait to try out more things with the nail striping tape!