In search of…French tip guides

I’ve got a good guy. What I need is a good guide — a good French tip guide, that is.

If you read the Memorial Day manicure takes one or two, you know I had a hard time with the guides. I’m wondering if good guides even exist.

It’s kind of a tricky dilemma. They need to be sticky enough so that the polish doesn’t get under the guide, but not so sticky that they leave gunk on your nails.

I’ve seen other techniques by the YouTube gurus (linda165 or MszJackieChu) that bypass the guides altogether. Let me just say that I’m not there yet. I can’t even keep the polish off my cuticles so we’re going to leave the free hand French tip technique alone for now.

This past weekend I tried two different brands with disappointing results. This week I happened to find myself browsing a CVS Pharmacy on my lunch break and looked for some additional french tip guides to try.  I wanted to compare different brands in search of a workable option. The only ones I could find came in a French manicure kit which I didn’t want (I don’t need the polish that comes in the kit), or in the form of a French tip pen which draws a white tip. I don’t always want white tips.  Sometimes I like to use other colors on my tips.

I considered going back online and ordering all the brands I could find. However, I’d already done a preliminary search and the product reviews weren’t very promising.  So I’m going to try an experiment.

I’m going to create my own French tip guides out of painters tape.  I won’t have time to work on this until sometime next week but I’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, what are some things that have worked for you?