How to - French tips with a difference - Pretty pastels

Nothing says girly and elegant more than the classic French tip nail design. But sometimes this design can seem quite plain, so today I will be showing you how to do a different take on the classic design using pretty pastel colours, in step-by-step photos.

Start by painting your nails in a base coat to help the nail polish to stick. Then cut masking tape into small strips and use these to tape off the bottom of your nails. You can use French tips, but I find using masking tape easier. 

Using any pastel colour that you want, paint the bottom of your nails. I couldn't decide between pink or blue, so I did alternating nails. I used Maybelline Color show polishes in Cool Blue and Pink Boom.

Whilst your nail varnish is still a little tacky, gently and carefully remove the tape. If you are left with a little ridge where the polish met the tape, you can very gently tap this down to make it less noticeable.  

 Using a nail striping brush, chose the same colour polish but in a darker shade, to create vertical lines down the tips.

Do the same on the other nails. My striper brush was actually a very similar colour to my base colour, so I wiped off the excess varnish and dipped it into a dark pink polish that I had to make these lines more noticeable. 

Finish off with a top coat to blend all the layers together and to help your design last longer. 

And there you have it, an easy and different take on the classic French Tip. You could use any colour that you wanted with this design, as long as you used a pastel for the base and a darker colour for the lines. I hope you enjoyed this step-by-step guide, let me know what you think of it via twitter, my profile is linked in my name down below. 

By Lucy Bunce