Review: Fing'rs Heart 2 Art Stripe Out Nail Art

Purchased by Me

For as much as I obsess over all things nail-related, would you believe that I've never actually worked with striping tape? There are some incredible things you can do with these thin little pieces of tape (just do a google image search for "striping tape manicures" and you'll see what I'm talkin' about it!).

So when I saw that Fing'rs offered some striping tape sets in their big Heart 2 Art display, I picked one up (you can see the polishes I purchased from this collection here, and the Get Spotted kit here).

Since this is the first time I've ever used striping tape, I thought I'd take you along on my journey!

 Fing'rs Heart 2 Art Stripe Out Nail Art 

(retail: $2.48 at Walmart)

 I thought that this package contained silver, gold and black striping tape, but the black is actually more of a dark metallic blue in person.

So for my very FIRST attempted at working with striping tape, I figured I'd do a pretty simple design, but not as simple as just straight across or up and down lines. Because let's face it, it's more fun to see something a tiny bit more complicated, right?

Looking at the pic above (of my thumb), you'll see that I first laid down a base coat of Sally Hansen Commander in Chic. I know that polish dries pretty quickly and it's not too thick, so I thought it would be a good choice. Then I laid down the striping tape in a crisscross pattern (NOTE: be sure you leave yourself a good amount of tape on the ends, so that you have something to grasp when it comes time to peel it off!).

Next, I decided to do an autumn color scheme and apply a coat of Wet n Wild Poison Ivy (from the Fall 2012 limited edition Pick Your Poison collection).  In my mind, greige and dark green seemed like they would look very cool together, and I knew that Poison Ivy was pretty opaque in one coat, so that's what I went with.

Immediately after applying Poison Ivy, I started peeling the tape off my nail (smoothly and steadily). The longer you wait to remove the tape, the bigger the chance that you're not going to get a clean line --trust me on that one. I've worked with regular old Scotch tape enough to know that it's always better to remove your tape when your polish is still very wet.

So what do you think of the results above? Pretty clean lines for my first time, eh? But this is just such an ugly color combo that I didn't even bother cleaning up my paint job or applying top coat. It literally looks like my actual nail is greige, doesn't it? Ew.

So...here's Bright Idea Number Two. Don't like the greige underneath the green? Well why not try the green underneath the greige? Now THAT will look cool, right?

NOPE.

First of all, Commander in Chic wasn't nearly opaque enough to cover Poison Ivy, so you can see that green coming through and it looks like a hot mess. To further add to this masterpiece, I forgot which pieces of tape I laid down on my nails last, so I started pulling up the bottom pieces of tape first, creating that giant hole you see above. NOTE: If you're going to do a crisscross pattern, remember the order in which you laid down your strips. You want to pull the last piece you put down first, and continue to work backwards. The last piece of tape that you remove should be the FIRST piece of tape that you put down, if that makes sense.

FINAL VERDICT: This tape is great--it's easy to apply, easy to remove and, as long as your base color is fully dry, I don't think you'll have any issues with your polish lifting when you remove it. My issue isn't with the tape itself, it's with the user. I just don't think I'm "cut out" for striping tape (see what I did there?) because honestly, it requires a lot of patience, attention to detail and some serious fine motor skills (and skillz!). I could see myself doing this on an accent nail every once in a blue moon, but I would probably have to be in just the right mood to try and do this on all ten fingers (unless it was a very, very simple pattern like two straight-across lines on each finger). If you are a nail art master, I'm sure you've already worked with striping tape and I'm also sure you can appreciate having striping tape at your local Walmart. If you're a nail art novice like me, this package sure beats having to order striping tape online (especially if you're not sure that you'll actually like working with it). So I'd say that if you're the least bit curious, bite the bullet, pay the $2.50 and try it for yourself (just don't use greige and dark green together!).

Do you own the Fing'rs Stripe Out Nail Art set? If so, what do you think of it?

The products featured in this post were purchased with personal funds. For more information, click here.