WNAC2015 - Neon Fishtail

Hello ladies! Goodness gracious, am I behind on blogging. So much so, that I'll be sharing 2 posts with you today! This first one is for last week's installment of the WNAC2015 I'm participating in on IG. The prompt was "Neon Fishtail" and this was one of the prompts that I knew exactly what I was going to do. Unfortunately, it didn't quite turn out the way I'd imagined it would, but we'll get into that. Let's get on to the tutorial!

Step 1:

Start with a white base with a coat of fast-drying topcoat.

Step 2:

Apply a latex barrier around your nails to help with cleanup.

Step 3:

Arrange striping tape in the fishtail pattern. This step definitely confused me at first, but I just started with a diagonal piece towards my cuticle and them alternated diagonal lines back and forth.

Step 4:

Apply splotches of polish to a cosmetic wedge and sponge it on. This is where things went awry. I used the China Glaze Electric Nights neons for this step, but they got muddled in the sponging and lost their neon quality. :( Major bummer.

Step 5:

Remove the striping tape and the latex barrier with a pair of tweezers.

Step 6:

Clean up any remaining polish around your nails with a cleanup brush dipped in acetone.

Step 7:

Finish up with a coat of fast-dying topcoat to smooth out the design.

And there's my week 3 design for WNAC2015. Definitely not my favorite so far, but it was nice to try something I've never done before. And that counts for both the fishtail design and the splotch-y gradient (even if it failed). Now onto the next blog post! And I promise it won't be super late this time. Much love! <3