ND2: Friday Night Black Lights

Here it's all about the stripes and the matte black. Any color background will work (and any type of matte, really), along with any type of stripe. I chose to remember the good, ol' football friday nights of high school...not that I really went to many of those. But maybe you've seen those black marks that football players put under their eyes. I was told that it's to stop the glare from stadium lighting reflecting off their sweaty faces and into their eyes. Whatever the real reasoning, it's my inspiration.

image from doctorheadly.wordpress.com

From the fabulous Hong Kong Collection by OPI, Jade is the New Black was the perfect color for astroturf. Combine with that some type of matte black (I chose Zoya Dovima), and you have your two colors.




Onto the three step process...




For Step 1, simply lay down your base color over your favorite base coat, completely covering the nail. Layer your shiny top coat over your base color and let dry.






Now for Step 2, you'll need a total of 5 pieces of tape. The only piece you really want to worry about for size is the center piece that will block off the stripe of base color that will be inbetween your matte stripes. You can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture that the thin inbetween strip of tape was the one I laid down first to see if they matched up on all my nails.

The inbetween thin slices of tape I used were about 2-3 mm thick, and the 4 outer strips of tape that form the square were about 1/4 inch thick.



The point of the square around the area the matte polish stripes will be, is so there are only two stripes of matte black towards the end of the nail. The look I was going for here was not a continuous stripe, but one that is just a rectangular block on the nails.




Step 3 is simply to paint in the matte color of your choice (here the matte black went with the look I was going for). Before you paint, you want to make sure that your pieces of tape are pushed down onto the nails completely, so no wet paint leaks under leaving a mark in an area that wasn't supposed to be painted. Once you have painted your nail, be sure to pull up the tape quickly, pulling all the pieces in one direction so there is no drag in the fresh polish you just laid down.

Also, because the matte striping ontop of the shiny color is a key point to this design, try not to lay down any top coat to get the full effect of this manicure.




And now you're done! What do you think? What colors would you use for this design?




Thanks for looking. Bye for now.