Sunday, April 7, 2013

Fishtail Braid


      I've been in love with the fishtail braid manicure since the first time I saw one. It's such an intricate design how can you not love it?!? So like with any nail art that I want to get just right I sat down and watched video after video on how to do this. After about 15 videos I felt prepared and set out doing my nails.

  I knew I wanted to use China Glaze Peachy Keen as the base color. Lately, I've been drawn to orange colors for spring, especially the ones that lean toward tangerine. I'm not normally an Orange person so this is kind of fun and surprising for me. I also knew that I needed to use really opaque colors for the braid. This gave me a little trouble because I wanted to use yellow for a bright I'm ready for a spring look. I have maybe 6 yellows in my collection and most of them are pretty sheer. Eek! What should I do? I decided on using my striper polishes. I knew I would have an easier time making my lines with them than a regular polish brush anyway.



 So here's what I came up with to try my mani. As always my trusty Orly Bonder base coat. Nail stripers from Sinful Colors in Sunset and Morning Breath (Ewww who came up with that name?) China Glaze Peachy Keen and Out The Door top coat.





  Here I have 2 coats of Peachy Keen plus top coat. I had some slight trouble with the application because the polish was a tad runny. I had to apply it in thin coats so the first one was a bit streaky. As you can see everything evened out nicely with the second coat and dried a hair darker than it is in the bottle.

 The tutorial I decided to use can be found here. I went with this one knowing that my yellow was going to be an issue if I actually overlapped the other colors.


  Now, normally I do my right hand first even though I'm right-handed. I figure I go slower with my left hand, I can get more confident with the strokes for when I do my left (and photographed) hand. Plus I'm less likely to smudge my right hand when it's wet. But this time I knew I was limited on the time I had to do the manicure and get it photographed so I did the entire thing on my left hand before any polish touched my right. I did learn a few things while doing my left hand but had a hard time applying them when I finally did the right. This is a harder manicure to do than I thought it would be! Its all about the angles. If one angle is off it throws the entire thing off.


Are you ready to see the finished results?



  I'm actually kind of proud of how this turned out. Originally I was planning on doing every nail but I think that may have been a bit much. I did have to do 2 coats with the yellow to get it to stand out but using a striper made that easy. I'm still trying to decide if I want to add some of the yellow on the other nails, but I can always do that later I guess. Maybe add a strip of yellow under the orange tips to keep with the line theme or mix it up with tiny dots.

  But now I have a question for you. I took quite a few pictures of this trying to get just the right shot. On one of them my flash went off , just one out of about 20 shots. I always thought I should avoid using those photos so I could get a more color accurate picture. I have a comparison of the photos for you and I'd love for you to tell me which one you like better and why.





7 comments:

  1. pretty colors and it looks great

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  2. I love the color combos! Also, I personally like the non-flash picture a little better. The flash tended to wash out your colors a teensy bit and it was more difficult to make out the fine details of the photo...if that makes sense?

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    1. It makes completel sense! And thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

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  3. I like the one with flash better because the colors are brighter and more vibrant. Great fishtail!

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    1. Thank you! I liked the flash because it picked up more of the sparkle, but I knew it kind of took away from other parts of the mani so I had to includ the other pictures as well. Thanks for your feedback!

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