Thursday, June 27, 2013

Review: Born Pretty Store Striping Tape

Hello!

I've done tons of striping manicures on this blog, and I own a bunch of nail tape. But much to my amazement, I realized a while back that I didn't have a roll of red tape; I bought the tape I have in a set where I didn't get to pick the colors I wanted. So when Born Pretty Store Born Pretty Store asked if there were items I wanted to review, I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out Born Pretty Store's striping tape.

Here is how the tape comes packaged; it comes in its own plastic envelope. As you can see, there is a lot of tape here; you'd have to work hard to run out of it unless you're doing a new striping manicure every day:



Here's a close-up on the color
I use this sort of nail tape primarily for two types of manicures. I use the tape as an accent on the nail itself, and I use it like painter's tape, to delineate patterns or areas of a design that will show after the tape is removed. I'm going to test out the tape in both of these types of manicures.

I did the first manicure for an Adventures In Stamping theme that involved stamping dragonflies or butterflies; I had an idea that I wanted to try out with Barry M Chameleon Blue, which switches from blue to purple when you put a topcoat on it. I thought it would be cool to have half of the nail in one color and half in the other, with different stamping on the halves--and what's a more perfect way to divide those halves than red striping tape, since red and blue makes purple? I stamped with Barry M Silver Foil on the blue half, and with Chameleon Blue itself on the red half (it's a great stamping polish). I stamped overlapping the tape so it would look like the dragonflies were hovering above the design (well, that was the plan, lol):





This is a rigorous test of the striping tape because I wasn't able to cover the tape up with topcoat--if I did, it would have changed the color of the polish underneath. I took this picture the day after I did the manicure, after sleeping with the tape on. As you can see, there is just the teensiest bit of peeling starting at the tip of the nail, and none at all at the cuticle end. I've had other nail tapes that don't stay put that well even when I have them slathered in topcoat. :)

I also decided the next day that I wanted to change up the design a bit, so I redid two of the nails, but left the middle and ring untouched:




This was taken at the end of the second day, and you can see there is a tiny bit more peeling, but still remarkably little considering there was no topcoat over it and it had gone through a fair amount of abuse at that point. If you're looking for a striping tape that will stay where you put it, this one will have some staying power for you.

I also wanted to test the tape out to see how well it performs when used as a tool for masking designs. In this manicure, I started with a base of Zoya Logan and Ivanka (Logan on the pinkie and middle, Ivanka on the ring and index), and used tape to create a design on the nail. I then sponged over the nail and the tape with a gradient of Barry M Silver Foil and Gold Foil (although it didn't turn out to be very noticeable in the pictures, it's there if you look carefully :) ), and removed the tape. I finished the design with some rectangular rhinestones:





The lines are crisp, the tape stuck well and didn't allow leakage underneath, but also came up easily and didn't pull the polish when I took it off. When I was working with it, it stayed put and that made it easy for me to trim the ends and place the next pieces accurately.

Overall, I found this tape as easy to work with as any other I've tried, in fact a bit more. It was also impressively durable, and I like that you can pick individual colors rather than have to be stuck with a bunch of colors you may not like.

If you'd like to order this or any other products from their store, I have a coupon for 10% off that you can use:


This is not an affiliate link and I don't make any money when/if you use it. However, if the code is used 10 times, Born Pretty Store will sponsor a giveaway on my blog, which means free products for you. :)

Thanks for looking! I hope you're having a good week. :)

Hugs and love,
M.

(The nail tape used in this post was provided for my honest review.)

12 comments:

  1. Wow I LOVE your second manicure. OMG its so perfect.

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    1. Thank you so much! Looks like we have a consensus, the second mani is better! I agree. I just couldn't get the first one to look the way I wanted it to...sigh. :)

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    2. maybe another day. It's pretty don't get me wrong, but your second has all that at more. :D

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    3. Have you been able to get Chameleon to work on you without staining, or did you give up?

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    4. I have tried every single base coat I got (and i got a handful of em), and Chameleon still stains, the degree of staining varies some, depending on the different base coat. And it takes so long for my nails to recover.

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    5. Grrrrr...Yeah, not worth it in that case. Sounds like a good one for a swap or blog sale!

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  2. Really nice striping manicures! I love the second one :) I recently got some striping tape so I'm excited to play with them :)

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    1. They're fun. Important tip--don't try to wrap the ends over the end of your nail, lol. I did that the first few times I tried them, and it doesn't work...>.<

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  3. I love using striping tape, I never leave it on my nails though, the urge to pick it off is too much. LOVE that second mani x

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    1. I have to put at least two coats of topcoat if I want to resist any temptation to pick...>.>

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  4. I love both of these!! That color combo on the second one is amazing!!

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    1. Thank you thank you! I just wish you could see the gradient better, but it's still nice. :)

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