How to do cut-out nails/ negative space nails

You want your nails to look healthy, so buff out any staining, or paint your nails a nude polish and wait for it to dry completely.

Paint a base coat. If you're going to paint a nude polish, do it after your base coat and wait for it to dry completely.

You can use regular tape, I'm using nail tape I got from Amazon. If your using regular tape, tape off the top half of your nail by your cuticle.

Paint half your nail and take off the tape immediately.

You can cut regular tape into a little chevron stripe shape. Put it on the middle of your nail.

Paint either side a color, and immediately take off the tape.

If you're using regular tape, just tape off one side of your nail.

Paint it one color, and immediately take off the tape.

Cut narrow pieces if you're using regular tape, and make an 'x'. If you do use nail tape, be careful not to get paint in 'x' spaces.

Paint it like this and immediately take off the tape. You can see I got paint in the 'x' space.

I forgot to take a pic of the tape, but tape off the top part of your nail and make a space in the other half of your nail, and paint it like this.

Clean up with polish remover and a small brush or q-tip. You can also clean up if you got polish on what is supposed to be 'negative space' on your nail.

After I cleaned up the skin around my nails and the negative spaces of my nails. You can topcoat and be done or...

Optional. You can use a small striping brush and outline your negative spaces with black polish. Some people say you can do the outline with Sharpie pen, I've never tried.

This is after I've outlined my negative space, and added topcoat. Some of my lines are shaky, I'm still practicing using striping brushes.

Hope your nails turn out great! Tell me what kind of guides you'd like and I'll work on them for you.