NOTD: MSMD Monday (Or, Bet you didn't know you could braid your nails!)

Hello!!!

My Monkey-See-Monkey-Do Monday Manicure this week was inspired by a lovely lady in one of my stamping groups, who did a 'fishtail' or 'braid' manicure on her nails for our Pink + Purple challenge. I saw it and I fell in love with it! Her name is Ashley, and here is her original manicure:

I was really excited by this, and couldn't wait to try my own. As you've heard me say a million times, I'm not a pink sort of girl, so I tried it with shades of brown and green instead. Here is how mine turned out:

Braided Nails

Close up!

And my favorite view :)

To make this manicure, I chose three polishes, China Glaze Con-Fused, You Move Me, and Cling On. I followed this tutorial, that Ashley provided for me from rejoicenailart.blogspot.com (please take a moment to check out that blog if you find this useful):

These directions worked perfectly. There are a couple of things I learned along the way that might help you, that I'll add...first of all, this takes a while, so be prepared for that; don't try to dash it off in 15 minutes while dinner finishes cooking. Second, and this might be obvious...choose colors that cover in one coat if you can. My golden brown above did not cover in one coat, so I had to apply a second before moving on with the next color, which added to the total time. And finally, I would try to choose polishes that are either the same brand, or have the same size brush; this will make it easier to get even strokes on the braid. :)

I love this look, and can't wait to do it again, particularly just as an accent nail, or as French tips.

Oh, one last thing. If you're up on your China Glaze polishes, you might have noticed that the ones I chose are all magnetic polishes. This was not a coincidence; I wanted to try a magnetic design over the braid on my accent nails, and I did just that on my left hand. It was NOT cute. I usually show even my fails on the blog, but it also didn't photograph well. I'm sure one of you talented artists out there could make it work, but for me it was a FAIL. :)

Hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for reading!

M.