DIY: Nail Art with Studs and Striping Tape

Hi!

Studs are probably one of my favourite things to use in nail art, followed closely by striping tape. Striping tape makes your lines so even and neat, and it's readily available in little bundles on eBay for next to nothing. The studs I'm using today are on eBay here and cost $1.19 (€0.99/£0.77) with free shipping for 300 gold/silver studs. You can get 10 rolls of striping tape on eBay here for $0.99 (€0.76/£0.64) with free shipping.

For this, I used Orly La Vida Loca, Color Club Bright Night, some studs and some tape. I had planned on going over the lines with Barry M Gold Foil but I completely forgot. Here's what I used:

Base coat, Top Coat, Acetone, Polish, Striping tape, studs, tweezers, dotting tool, blu-tac.

I thought I'd take a few pictures when I was doing them to show you that it's not as hard as it looks to do nail art at all.

Start off with two coats of your chosen base colour, then add a topcoat. Wait until this is completely dry, otherwise the tape will pull off lumps of your polish. The topcoat stops the colours running into each other. This nail art would also be really good on the third or fourth day of a mani, if you want to cover tipwear or a chip.

Pretty self-explanatory! Lining up the tape is the most fiddly bit, but you can play around with it until you're happy with it. Remember the polish will be going up to the outside of the tape, so that's where you need to get your clean line. I removed the tape with tweezers right after applying the polish in picture 2, this is crucial to get a clean line. Just grab the tip with tweezers and gently peel it off. As you can see by the third picture, I'm in no way neat, so don't worry if you do that, you can clean it when it dries. In picture 4, I've used a blob of blu-tac on the end of a dotting tool to pick up the studs a little easier. Place that on the nail while the polish is still wet. Leave the polish to dry, clean up, and add a topcoat. I used a small bit of acetone on a brush to gently remove anything that shouldn't be there.

You can use striping tape in loads of different ways:

This is handy if you want to do neon tips, alternative french tips, or just play around with designs. If you want to do stripes on your nails, just use two or more pieces of tape:

Don't worry about being messy, it can all be cleaned up afterwards. When you're happy with your designs, just add a topcoat, clean up, use some cuticle oil or hand cream (I prefer hand cream), and you're done!

You can use any or all of those methods to do a huge variety of nail art looks, you really don't need much skill at all to get really eye-catching nails. If you don't have a steady hand - that's what acetone is for!