Bargain Alternative To Liquid Palisade Liquid Nail Tape

Hey There Polished People!

Before I show you what I want to show you today, have you ever worked REALLY hard on something only to have it turn out like crap and you just want to punch someone and/or cry??? I have recently brushed up on my crocheting skills (see my shop here and my FB page here) and for my cousin’s baby shower this weekend I wanted to make a cute fleece blanket with crocheted edging (I’ll post a pic on my Facebook later). Well, I’ve been working on it for about 3 hours tonight and it seems like every 5 minutes I’m making some horrible mistake. What. A. Mess. 😦 I think I could have made it faster if I just crocheted the whole thing, AND it would look nicer!! Anyway… Let’s get on with this post, shall we? I have a really exciting find to share with you all.

I’ve been hearing about this Liquid Palisade stuff lately, have you heard of it? It’s “liquid painter’s tape” and basically it’s latex that you paint onto your nail where you want it to stay bare, or you can paint it around your cuticles and push them back before you paint your nails with polish. When you’re done, you peel up the Liquid Palisade and are left with perfectly painted nails and clean cuticles, or a cool tape mani design. You can find Liquid Palisade here but it’s $22 plus shipping for .3 ounces. That’s over 66 bucks per ounce. YIKES!! Right??

Thankfully, a wonderful Instagram acquaintance, BLW1605 (Brittany) gave me an excellent tip!! What did she tell me? She told me I could use latex hair glue instead of the LP. Here’s the glue-

You use it exactly like Liquid Palisade. I did a Seattle Seahawks colored gradient for Super Bowl so I’ll show you I how I used the hair glue/ Liquid Palisade knockoff to minimize clean-up. After I painted my basecoat and before I sponged on the gradient, I applied the glue all around my finger nails, like so:

I got the white/clear glue but you can get the dark kind if you prefer. You allow the glue to fully dry to the touch (mine was dry in the above pic) and then you sponge on your gradient.

As you can see, I did all my nails before removing the glue, but I wouldn’t do that in the future, see the tips below. Anyway, once your gradient is done, just kind of roll up an edge of the glue and pull it off using your fingers or, even better, a pair of tweezers. Instead of having alllll that polish to clean off of your skin and cuticles you have very little to none!
Here are my finished Super Bowl nails. Too bad the Seahawks lost.

Pretty cool, right??? And at $1.99 for .75 ounce that is only $2.67 an ounce, as opposed to Liquid Palisade at $66 an ounce. Crazy right??? And I actually prefer just applying it straight from the bottle instead of using a brush because the brush just gets all goopy in about 5 seconds anyway. This stuff dries super fast so it gums up the brush in no time. That brings me to the tips, which I believe would work for the super expensive LP as well.

Tips For Using Liquid Nail Tape/ Hair Glue/ Liquid Palisade
•Apply a fairly thick layer, squirting it directly out of the bottle if using the hair glue. Just twist the cap down so only a little comes out and just squeeze and spread that wonderful glue all over your fingers around your nail. Don’t forget under the free edge! Most instructions tell you to use a thin layer, but I think thick is best, it keeps the latex stronger so when you peel it off it all comes off in one piece.
•Remove the glue as soon as you’re done with each nail, while the polish is still wet. If you wait till it’s dry, it tends to slip off the glue and you’re left with little flares of polish where it touches your bare skin. Make that mistake and you’ll know what I mean.
•Use this hair glue, it’s exponentially less expensive.

You can find this hair glue at Sally Beauty Supply. Thanks again to Brittany for the AWESOME tip!! Make sure to follow her Instagram account and tell her Nicole from Polish Me, Please! sent ya!! 😉 I don’t know about you all, but I can’t be shelling out 22 bucks for some liquid nail tape…. That’s like two and a half full-price OPIs!! 😉 And who pays full price…. Amirite?? 😉

Have you tried this or any other brand of liquid nail tape? I’ve been obsessed with gradients ever since I started using this, and if you try it I bet you will be too!! If you have more tips for us all, please leave them in the comments below. As always, thanks so much for reading and commenting and till next time- Happy Polishing!!