May Tri-Polish Challenge Day 4 - Tuxedo Nails + Mini-Tutorial

Ok guys!  This is it. Today is the last day of the Tri-Polish Challenge for May.  I did it!  I'm done!  I don't know what it was about this month, but I feel like it was extra hard, but I did it! Go me!  

So, perhaps you have not been keeping up with the Tri-Polish Challenge and wonder what my SUPER GRUELING task was.  Let me tell you:

I picked three nail polishes (OPI - Quarter of a Cent-Cherry, Butter London Blagger, and Cover Girl Non-Stop Stone), for the three assigned colors this month - red, blue and grey and created four manicures using those polishes.  Want to see the other ones? Check them out here, here and here.

Anyhoodle, I felt like the colors I chose this month were really mens-wear-y so I decided to make some tuxedo nails.

Keep reading for the tutorial and more pictures!

So I started out with a base of Sally Hansen White On (side note: I have been calling this nail polish "White Out" for like the entirety of this blog, which means I've mis-named it about 5,000 times given that I use it in almost all of my manicures).  Then I used striping tape to make the design of the tuxedo jacket and lapels.

1. I started off with two vertical-diagonal-ish pieces of tape for the sides of the jacket

2. Then, added a V of tape around them to make the bottom half of the lapels.

3. Then, two sideways V's to make the notch in the lapel.  By far the hardest part of all of this was keeping everything symmetrical.

Once all the taping was done, I painted over the tape with the regular polish brush, waited about 30 seconds and then peeled it off in the reverse order that I put it on.  I made the bow ties with toothpicks, and topped everything off with a coat of Essie Good to Go. (My nail art brushes arrive today! I'm so excited to graduate from toothpick drawing!)

I think I can work on my taping technique a bit, but I love how they turned out!

A shrewd eye may have picked up that in the tutorial pictures, picture #3 is of a different finger (index) than the other two (ring), that's because I taped the "notch" tapes a little two far in on my ring and middle fingers and then had to go over them again with a wood nail and a delicate touch.  Learn from my mistake! Don't let the lapel tapes touch the edge-of-jacket tape!  This path will only lead you to doom!

And that's it!  Hooray for the month of May!  Definitely take the time to check out everyone else's manicures.  I'm always super impressed with what they do!