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So I'm not a great painter and a bit of a perfectionist, a bad combo for certain. I'd like some advice for getting at least tabletop standard hazard stripes and blue flame effects on standard infantry modals, that can be carried out by a dummy (me!) and repeated on a large amount of modals without losing my sanity in the process!

I have looked it up, for the hazard stripes I see some have suggested averland sunset as a base, apply two layers, then black stripes, clean up mistakes, then flash glitz yellow over the averland. Using a fine detail brush. For creating the lines, would painting up against a straight blade do the job or is a fancy modelling pen really the way to go?

For the blue flames, would Black base, Caldor sky for the flame print, lothern blue for the brighter areas of the flame and a highlight of white scar on the flame tips do the trick? Maybe then a nuln shade on the darkest areas of blue? Again using a fine detail brush.

I won't lie, yellow and white are my most feared colours! Anytime I try them, I immediately regret it! Any suggestions or advice would be most welcome, usually when I paint I stick to the easier schemes, try to keep it clean and use a wash+ some small highlights, so this is a bit outside my small comfort zone!

Masking tape is the best dummies way of getting around it.

Get some Tamiya masking tape, a cutting mat, a metal ruler and an exacto knife. Cut strips out of the masking tape, apply to black (or yellow) model piece, paint with opposite colour.

For flames, just find one of the billion flame tutorials out there and replace red for a darkblue, and yellow for a really light blue - Buttery Commissar on the forums here did some really nice flames on their aquilla lander (probably in the P&M blogs), I'm sure they'd share the recipe with you.

You'll find it easier to do blue flames if you start from white. It will look much hotter.
Black can kill a lot of colours if it's use first. As all paints are made from pigment suspended in solution, the paler colours struggle as you can see through the solution to the colour underneath. If you're using thinned paint, it can take a while to see your result applied over black.

Thanks! I see a common mistake with painting flames, which I nearly made, was painting the tips brighter, where it should actually be the base of the flames and progressively darker.

So would White scars, lothern blue and caldor do the job in that order, starting from the base of the flames to the tips?

Also for flame designs, do I just free hand it based off pictures on the net, or is there a handier way? It would be for the shoulders/legs of space marines so on a pretty small scale.

I'll look into the Tamiya masking tape for the hazard stripes! I was sort of considering wussing out of the traditional yellow and black, due to the difficulty of painting yellow, and going with either lothern blue or caldor instead of yellow.

A bit maverick and a quick google showed up no results for others doing that with 40k, so a bit unsure if it'll look gak or turn out cool.