Lightning bolt nail art

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How to cite: Wong M. Lightning bolt nail art. Lab Muffin Beauty Science. September 3, 2012. Accessed March 29, 2024. https://labmuffin.com/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!


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26 thoughts on “Lightning bolt nail art”

  1. Oh my gosh hun, these are gorgeous!!!! What type of tape do you use?
    I was using regular (Australian) tape, lol. But now I’ve gone and got Scotch Magic tape instead, I’m hoping this works better and doesn’t leave the marks that the other was using.

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