Lightning bolt nail art

Happy new season everyone! Today I'm showing you the nail art I rocked for a good 5 days a while ago. I posted this on Instagram when I first wore it, but I've had such a backlog of nail photos that I haven't gotten around to posting it here til now... lucky there's Polish or Perish or I'd never post all the manis I do! ;)

I followed this tutorial by Nailside for this mani. Nailside is one of my favourite blogs for nail art designs - her bold graphic manis are right up my alley! This requires 2 rounds of taping.

Bottom to top layers (cuticle to free edge):
Base: Sally Hansen Black Out + Revlon Grape Fizz (purple flaky, smells like grape)
Middle: ulta3 Envy (rosy gold foil, very opaque)
Top: A-England Lady of the Lake (muted purple scattered holo - my first A-England, still haven't worn this on its own!)

While I love the crisp straight lines taping gives, it's a bit of a pain to cut up all the tape, and to wait for each layer to dry properly.

I've gotten the hang of tape manis now - the key for me is to paint each layer quickly and thinly with opaque shades, and pull the tape off towards the wet side.

Extra credit nerdery: Cutting the tape so you get the same angles is easy if you use high school geometry - "alternate angles on parallel lines are equal", so if you cut your tape diagonally to form a "Z", the angles (θ in the diagram below) will be the same. Who would've thought that would ever come in handy!