Stars and Stripes

4th of July is here again!  So it's time for a nail design to celebrate!

The colors used for this nail design were the requisite red, white, and blue.  For the blue I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Thinking of Blue, which was a great blue to use because one coat offered complete coverage, where the color underneath does not show through the blue on top.  For the white, OPI's Alpine Snow - Matte was used.  For the red, a mid tone bright red was used from American Apparel in Downtown LA.

Step 1 was two coats of the white.  Whatever white polish you choose to utilize, that will be the first color you will paint on your nails as your base color.  If you are not using a matte polish -- one that dries fast -- then it would be beneficial to use a fast drying top coat after you paint on the white polish to speed up the wait time between the first step and the second step.  As a side note to painting your nails with the white polish, you don't need to bring the white polish all the way to the beginning of your nail, because in Step 2 you will be painting over most of the white and covering up the upper part of your nail in blue.

Step 2 is where the blue painter's tape comes in.  You will just need two small strips of tape per each nail (unless you decide you want more red stripes on each nail).  Depending on your nail length you can use wider strips of tape to mark off the areas where the white stripes will be.  Going nail-by-nail lay on the two pieces of tape where each strip is parallel to the other.  Paint one color then the other color as quickly as possible and pull off the tape in the direction each strip of tape is laid down on the nail.  (You want to work one nail at a time and take off the tape as quickly as possible, because the longer you leave the tape on the nail, the more the nail polish you painted on over the tape starts to dry and sticks to the tape leaving "strings" of polish when you try to pull off the tape.)

Here for Step 3 you add your stars!  The stars used for this nail design were nail studs from Kiss called "Nail Artist - metallic" that were purchased at Walgreen's.  Each stud has a sticky backing, but you'll still want to press the star into your nail polish (that's still wet) to hold the star in place. 

If you do decide to use stars on this nail design, you can make everything look more uniform by making sure one point of each star is facing up and centered on your nail.

Step 4 is to add top coat!  This is essential to keep the stars stuck to your nails.  Here you may need to do more than one coat of top coat in order to seal in the stars.  In order to try and make sure your colors do not bleed together (especially over the white), paint the top coat on your nail diagonally in the direction the polish is drawn so the brush is not dragged down the nail blending one color into the next.

And once your top coat is dry, you'll have your 4th of July nails that have both the stars and stripes that are associated with the red, white, and blue of this day.