I look for inspiration for my Manicure Monday designs in a lot of places. Sometimes I think about what events I’ll be attending that week, sometimes I look at what new techniques I’d like to try, and sometimes I just stare at my nail polish collection and hope that something comes to me. Today’s Manicure Monday was totally inspired by a dress I bought. The dress is solid black on top, with sheer, billowy sleeves. The bottom is a flowy, silk black and muted gold chevron pattern. I loved the pattern of the skirt so much that I created this week’s Manicure Monday from it!

For this manicure, I had one accent nail on each hand and the rest of the nails had a modified French manicure. You can change it up and create the accent design on every nail, leave out the modified French on the other nails, or even just stick with the modified French. You can change up the colors, add some sparkles, and do whatever you want! Make this manicure yours – but here’s how I made it mine.

After starting with clean nails and adding a base coat of Seche Natural, I began my manicure with Essie’s Sand Tropez. It’s a great neutral base, with just enough color to stand out.  I used two coats of Sand Tropez, and then I let it dry completely.  It’s important not to move on to the next steps until your polish has dried completely because we’ll be using tape and that will mess up your base color.

Once your polish is totally dry, cut out skinny strips of tape. The thinner the strips are, the more stripes you’ll be able to get on your nail.  Begin adding the tape to your nails, creating a “V” shape that points down towards the center of the tip of your nail.  For the inverted French, you can stop here.  For your chevron accent, continue creating the “V” shape with the tape up your nail, leaving space to create the stripes, as displayed here.

Before applying polish, make sure to press down the tape all over your nail, especially at the edges. This helps to lock out any new polish and keep your lines clean.  I like to use blue painter’s tape for my nail designs because I like to think that if it works on real paint, it should work on nail polish!

Once the tape is all set, take your accent color – I used Maybelline’s Color Show Nail Lacquer in Onyx Rush. For the modified French nails, apply the black polish at the tips of your nails, ensuring that you stay underneath the tape you put down.  For the chevron accent nail, you can apply the black polish all over the top of your nail and the tape. Be sure to get all the way out to the edges of your nails so that the strips extend across your whole nail.

Before removing the tape, allow the black polish to dry a bit. I’d say to wait at least five minutes, but more if you can. The drier the black polish is, the less likely you’ll mess up any stripes that you worked so hard to get! Once it’s dry or you can’t wait any longer, remove the tape and set with a top coat. As always, I like Seche Vite.

Will you try this Chevron Stripes manicure? What are you rocking for Manicure Monday?