Nail Art: FingerFood's Theme Buffet #15 - Fishtail

The prompt for this week's Theme Buffet was "fishtail," and I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive when I first saw the theme. If you're not aware, "fishtail" refers to the technique/design that creates a braid-like effect on the nail. (well, I guess you could have gone with LITERAL fish tails, too, as some clever people did!)

This was my first time trying to do the fishtail braid technique,  and overall, I suppose it didn't come out that bad! Read more to see how I put this look together.

As I mentioned, this was my first time doing a fishtail manicure. While I had a vague idea of how to achieve the look, I followed this tutorial on Lucy's Stash to make sure I didn't make a complete mess of it. She somehow makes it look deceptively easy and simple...

Yeah right.

I started off by painting a white base (mostly because I wanted to swatch Butter London's Cotton Buds). All of the nails have this base, except for my thumb. I had screwed up that nail trying an orange and silver gradient that looked horrible, so just applied the silver without a base. Comparing the pinky to the thumb, I actually prefer the two coats of silver over white to three coats of silver alone.

As I slooooooooowly painted each line of the fishtail braid with a nail art brush (for more control and a thinner line than the bottle brush provides) , I worked on my other nails and waited for each line of the braid to dry.  

As mentioned, the pinky and thumb were painted silver, and I used a bright orange on my pointer. I wanted to do something on my middle finger to break up all the solid colors, so went with an easy (but pain to clean up) gradient featuring the white and silver.

If there was one complaint, I'm not sure how my colors worked out.  Do they come across too "Halloween"-ey? Or are they okay? I wanted to try a bright (but not neon) colored manicure to give me a bit of a change from the mix of very-dark and very-pastel manicures that I've done lately. At least I didn't pair the construction-zone orange with black!

Polishes / Items used in this manicure:

• White: Butter London - Cotton Buds
• Orange: Butter London - Silly Billy
• Silver: Butter London - Diamond Geezer

How did I do for my first time? Have you tried this technique before? It was DEFINITELY time consuming, but I like the effect. I might not do this one very often, but I might give it a try every now and then.

Make sure to check out the other amazing nail art by other participants, and feel free to join us! You can find us on the FingerFood's Theme Buffet Facebook group, and beside from the InLinkz below, you can see the work on the group Pinterest board.

An InLinkz Link-up