Harry Potter Themed Manicure and Pedicure

A couple of the girls I'm going to Orlando with and I decided to get themed pedicures for our trip. One of the girls did Minnie Mouse (red polish with white polka dots and a Minnie head silhouette on her big toes), one did princess (glittery pale pink with rhinestones on her big toes), and I did Harry Potter.

I knew I wanted to represented Slytherin mostly, but I also wanted it to be more obvious that these were Harry Potter nails. I ended up having my friend do green with gray tips on the small toes and red with a yellow lightning bolt on the big toes. They looked pretty Christmas-y until the yellow and gray details were added, but I really like how they turned out.

Eventually, I decided to do my nails, too. I wanted to try putting the Hufflepuff (apparently my house according to Pottermore, ugh) and Ravenclaw colors on my fingernails and adding a stripe.

Tuesday night, I did Phase 1 of my manicure and painted my nails yellow and blue.

Since I wanted to make sure they were completely dry before I continued, I waited until Wednesday night to do the hard part - Phase 2: The Stripes.

To create the desired stripe, I used two small pieces of Scotch tape on each nail to cover the parts I didn't want to paint.

That's about all there is to tell you from a step-by-step process besides my lessons learned below, but here's how they turned out:

They turned out too messy to justify a closeup picture, but they look kind of neat from far away.

Lessons Learned

• Remove the tape very shortly after painting. Don't wait until the polish is at the tacky stage or some of the tape will stay painted on.
• It's probably best to do one hand at a time. It was harder to navigate the brush with ten taped fingers, and I didn't get the tape off in time.
• I used jewelry pliers to remove the tape so that I didn't mess up my nails. I wanted to use Tweezers, but the tiny pliers were closer. Either way, they were essential to this process since I did all ten stripes at once.
• I might try painter's tape next time. The Scotch tape was stickier than I anticipated.
• I used a top coat for the first time pretty much ever, so that should help my messy manicure stay in place for awhile.
• Not surprisingly, my left hand turned out a lot better than my right hand, but that's unavoidable unless I have someone else do my nails.
• On a few of my nails, the polish ended up bubbly after it dried. I have no idea what this means, but if anyone does, I'd love to know how to prevent that next time.