Freehand Neon Stripes

Hello Lovelies!  I was doing really well keeping up on the Freehand Challenge on Instagram for the last couple of months, but this month I have fallen a week behind.  I had initially created a neon flakie rainbow gradient that I was going to use as the base for this prompt, but couldn't bear to cover it up with any of my not so perfect freehand stripes.  (If you are on Instagram checkout my feed to find the gorgeous gradient I created.)  I spent the weekend wearing and enjoying my gradient nails,  so that is how I ended up falling an entire week behind on the Freehand Challenge.  This is what I ended up creating for the Neon Stripes prompt for last week...

Materials I used:
Base coat - INM Ridge Free
Black base polish - Sinful Colors 'Black on Black'
White and black nail art stripers
Neon Polishes - Essie 'Too Taboo,' 'Serial Shopper,' 'Vices Versa,' 'I'm Addicted,' & 'Sittin' Pretty'
Top Coat - Rica 'Glossy Glam'

I often use white as a base color this time of year because its summer and warmer weather calls for brighter colors.  However, I decided to go with a black base this time around just to change it up a little bit.  I started off with two coats of black polish.

Using a white nail art striper I drew three horizontal lines across each nail.  I started with white stripes so that the neon colors would be brighter and more visible over the black.  Freehand stripers are so difficult to draw perfectly, so these end up very uneven and messy.

With a black nail art striper I fixed up some of my mistakes and evened out the widths of the stripes.  There still not perfect but much better.

Using a thin brush and my neon polishes, I filled in the white stripes.  I used Essie's neon collection from 2014, its not a very good neon collection so a white base is vital to make the colors look neon, which makes them perfect for this nail art design.

I finished up by correcting minor mistakes with my black nail art striper, then performed a bit of clean up with acetone and a brush, and topped it all off with a glossy top coat.

I'm really glad I decided against skipping this prompt and went ahead and created this manicure.  Even though this was not my first intended design for neon stripes, I'm still very please with how it turned out.  It may not be perfect but it still is pretty good.

I may end up recreating this design using tapes to achieve that perfect straight line mani that I so love, but it was good to practice freehand.  Someday, with enough practice I might just be able to paint a straight line without making a big mess.

I hope you enjoyed this freehand design, stay tuned because I have many more posts planned this week.  I will finally get around to testing out some squishy nail art stampers, I also have some new stamping polishes arriving this week, I will be swatching the lovely Gothic Gala Lacquer's Science is Beautiful Collection, and I have this week's Freehand Challenge Ikat nail art design.  All in all, it's a busy nail week.  Thanks for stopping by, see you next time.

Your Fellow Plebe,