(colours used picture polish peaches n cream - base, butter London Trout Pout, Zoya Dove, Purity and Trixie and a England Merlin on accent nail)
Hi everyone! I had a request to do a tutorial on multi colour stripes. I hope I've taken enough photos to show each step I do.
Firstly you need to paint you base colour and leave it until it is dry, if you apply tape too early it will ruin the base colour. Once dry you place the nail vinyl straights in whatever size and width that you would like. Make sure before adding colour that they are all adhering properly to stop any bleeding of colour. You can see how I taped mine below.
The next stage is choosing a colour for your stripe, I place a small amount polish on baking paper, you can use whatever surface is best for you, some use palettes or al foil. Get a nail art brush and colour in between the decal with your polish, I do my whole hand in one go with the different colours. You then just repeat with your different colours. I save one colour to use in the next stage to place different coloured stripes than just the base colour together.
repeat until you've filled all the gaps in. I then found it easiest to take the tape off with tweezers, go carefully to stop polish pulling off.
The next step is to place your final colour on so that you have different colours together than just the base colour. It's important here that you've let the other stripes dry as you will place decals on to the stripes you just made. You could also top coat here before placing your last colour. As you can see I butt the decals up to nearly the edge of the stripe to make sure I fully cover the area between the stripes. I did this stage one finger at a time as the stripes are so fresh it's best to work quickly on each nail.
In the photo below you can see I'm at my pinkie with the silver foil I've used as my last colour.
If you end up with dried clumps (best word I can think of for it but where polish has dried in a lump on to the next stripe or moved on top of itself when you've pulled off the tape) on top of your stripe or hanging into the next one carefully, very carefully wet your clean up brush with acetone and just sit it on the lump for a split second, you may need to do it a couple of times to dissolve the lump but don't be too aggressive or you'll ruin the stripes. If you can get rid of these before top coat there is less chance of bleeding. I sometimes I will go back over a stripe with polish and a nail art brush if I have a bleed. Then it's just a matter of topcoat, I paint my topcoat in the direction of the stripes to stop smearing. I also flood my nail with topcoat so that the brush doesn't touch the polish and cause smearing.
Hope this has been helpful, Tx.
