Rookie

When I imagine our girl Weetzie at the beauty salon gettin’ her nails did before hopping onto the back of My Secret Agent Lover Man’s motorcycle (which helps them dry faster BTW), I am pretty sure she’d be walking out with the latest and craziest nail design. For today’s Weetzie-inspired nails, I wanted to come up with a funky look that reflected all the pretty colors surrounding her every day in Shangri-L.A., like pink plastic flamingos on a rich green lawn with the bright blue sky overhead. Now I was not about to front like I knew how to draw an actual flamingo on my nails. I had to do something cool, but fairly easy. DAS RIGHT IT’S TAPE MANICURE TIME!

You’ll need:

• A light, non-pastel pink shade. I used a nice bubblegum pink called I Pink I Can by Sally Hansen.
• A non-pastel green shade, like Essie’s Mojito Madness.
• A sky blue shade. I chose Revlon’s Coastal Surf.
• A glitter top coat. Essie’s Set In Stones was my pick because of its differently sized silver specks.
• Scotch tape. I used the Magic brand in my cute lil high-heel tape dispenser. They even have this divalicious one.
• Scissors (optional)
• Clear top coat (optional, but recommended)

1. Paint your nails pink the night before. I KNOW, I KNOW. You might get annoyed that this is a two-part process, but trust me, it’s going to be so worth it. You need the polish COMPLETELY dry in order to put the tape over it, and we don’t want to take any risks.

2. Cut two small pieces of tape and place them at opposite angles on your nail so the part that is left uncovered forms a V shape.

3. Using the green or blue polish (whichever you prefer to do first since you will be alternating), paint over the part that is uncovered. Make sure you don’t put a big GLOB of paint on there like I did a couple of times. You don’t need that much.

4. And now, THE BIG REVEAL. After about a minute, carefully and slowly peel back the pieces of tape and you will find a perfect pie of color.

5. Repeat for all fingers, alternating between green and blue. Remember to be CAREFUL. I cut my pieces of tape as I went along, because I’m a wild child, but you might want to cut them all beforehand.

6. Gaze in awe at the beauty bestowed upon your fingertips, and perhaps even sing “Part of Your World” with the lyrics changed to suit this situation: “Look at these nails / Aren’t they so neat? / Wouldn’t you think my nail game is complete? / Wouldn’t you think I’m the girl, the girl who has EVERYTHING.”

7. OOH BABY IT’S SPARKLE TIME! I debated whether or not I should leave these nails as is since I think they are pretty rad already, but then I remembered Weetzie LOVES sparkly thangs, so I topped off the manicure with this awesome silver glitter. And as I have preached before, glitter polish is also wonderful for hiding any mistakes.

8. Add your clear top coat (if you have it) and ta-da! Perfect sherbet-colored nails that Weetzie herself would think are slinkster-cool! ♦