Liquid Latex Polishing Tutorial

You may have heard of Liquid Palisade, the stuff you put on your cuticles or wherever you don't want polish, polish as usual, then peel off, and voila, right? Well it's $22, so nevermind. When I first saw it I thought...why not use liquid latex?

Cool right!? As you can see it's not perfect at all, but with practice I'm sure it would get better. It's only as perfect as you can paint it on. The great thing about this is if you mess up you can just fix it, especially with nail art. If you messed up in polish you'd have to repaint the whole nail. I actually like the more creative applications for this...

You could put it around your cuticles for water marbling or sponging - all those messy nail art techniques. 

An easy french

Some fun lines and random stuff. I tried doing dots too and those don't work out so well. It does really help when the latex goes over the edge of your nail and onto your skin so you can grab it more easily.

 Don't get too carried away though, and wait till the polish is all the way dry underneath. I did swirls and dots and came out with this...

 This is what the liquid latex I have looks like. I got it from Party City for Halloween. It's used for costume and theater makeup. We've used it to make gashes, peeling skin, and ugly wounds.

Be warned it totally messes up your brush, so don't use your favorite nail art brush or anything. If you like it, I'd pour it into an old striping polish bottle or something like that. Keeping the brush wet with latex seems to be fine. I have this soaking in some hot soapy water right now so we'll see what comes of it.

Not perfect, but fun right!? Definitely get some of this instead of Liquid Palisade. You can find little 1oz tubes for maybe $5, and my big thing was about $16. Especially around Halloween loads of places carry it - Walmart, Party City, those seasonal Halloween stores, Amazon, etc. I read that some people use white glue instead. It does peel off, but it seems like it would break off in little pieces easier instead of stretch like the rubber latex. I believe it's water soluble though so it should be easier to get out of brushes? You could even use your peel off glue base coat! Others have used eyelash glue too (it may be very similar to latex) if you have any extra tubes of that lying around.