Whew! You made it through that first post.  Now the fun begins!  Seeing how the 4th of the July is only a couple weeks away, I wanted to post something a little more patriotic.  I wanted to post it a little early so you had time to try it and practice it before the holiday actually gets here!

So, here is what I am working with:

Now to save time, I will tell you now that I ALWAYS use a base coat and a top coat every time I paint my nails.  You should use a base and top coat because it will protect your nails from getting damaged or changing colors as well as making your polish last longer! For today I am using red, white and blue polish (obviously!).

I decided to start with white as my base.  I did this because it is the lightest color and the other colors will easily show up over it.  Depending how thick your white polish is, you may need to do two coats. Let this polish dry completely!!!! That is very important because we are going to use tape (yes, tape) to make our lines.  If the polish is not completely dry, the tape will take the paint right off.  If you are busy and can't spend hours waiting for paint to dry, paint them at night and do the rest the next day :).

Ok, here is the fun part! Take some tape (any tape works, even Scotch!) and cut several strips to use.  I used painters tape because I had some laying around from an old craft I did.  The amount of strips you use on each nail depends on the size of your nail or how big you want your stripes to be.  We are going to paint the largest section on the bottom blue, and the stripes on the top red.  I like to peel the tape of each nail right after I paint it so the paint doesn't dry to the tape too much.  See the picture below to see my progress.

As you can see, it does get a little messy.  I promise you that this is nothing that a little nail polish remover and a q-tip can't take care of!  As you see, you can take the tape off and have straight lines! Clean up the edges and wait for the polish to dry before adding your top coat. You do not want to apply the top coat too soon because it will smear all of the paint together!

Here is the finished product! You can even add glitter polish to the top if you want!  I hope you like it!  Let me know if you have any questions!