I worked this morning, so got home and didn't really have anything to do. I decided to spend hours on Tumblr (like most days) and some of the nail-art on there is really amazing. I was inspired by lots of things on there - dip-dyed hair, bleached shorts, nail art - so decided to try and combine all of that together. Gradients seem to be everywhere at the moment, and doing it on nails looks so hard!! I thought it was done with an airbrush, or with tiny tiny dots of nailpolish.. but then I discovered doing it a MUCH easier way! I wasn't too sure how it was actually going to look.. but I'm pleasantly surprised with it :)
First you'll need to decide on what colours your going to use - I was torn between pink or blue, but went for pink. Gather up all of your nailpolishes in that colour range to help you decide which ones to use. The colours I used were:
Sally Hansen Diamond Strength No Chip - 29 Radiant Rose
No7 Stay Perfect - 40 Sugar Syrup
Avon Arabian Glow - Coral Sands
17 Fast Finish - Pink Grapefruit
No7 Stay Perfect - 45 Very Petal
Spectacular - Mermaid 83
Obviously don't go out and buy these exact ones haha, just use whatever you've got - they should all blend together as long as they go from light to dark. I painted my first base coat with Revlon 050 - White on White to give myself a clean canvas for the colours to show up on, but it looks really pretty just clear too. Make sure that your base coat is completely dry before you put any other colours on or they will all blend together (which we don't want just yet!)
Create swatches of all your colours in order, on a piece of paper or a paper plate so you can easily sponge the colour on. I used an old foundation sponge, and just cut it up (the sponges never worked for my foundation anyway aha). Dab the lightest colour you've got onto the paper and wipe away and excess polish.
Dab it onto your nail almost all the way to your cuticle, with less pressure the nearer the bottom of your nail. I did this three times because the pink I've got is really light and I wanted to get a really solid base, but it's entirely upto you how you'd like to do it :)
Again it's completely upto you how many shades of colour you'd like to use, I did 6, so it took a while for each coat to dry. Do this over with each shade, doing less and less each time until you get to the solid dark pink at the top of your nail - this will create the gradient effect.
To top it off, I used two glitter nail polishes to make give them a sort of galactic look, I used gold (Rimmel London 651 Eccentricity) and pink (Barry M Nail Paint - 264 Pink Irridescent). I chose to use two because the gold has really nice big clumps of glitter; whereas the Barry M is very fine. I found it easier to just dab the polish straight onto the sponge and then onto the nail. I only did it at the top; but then went over the whole nail with the pink glitter.
Putting a good quality top coat on is really important too, I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat (mainly because it dried all the layers in 30 seconds!) The top coat will keep your glitter stuck down instead of peeling away.
Sorry the pictures aren't the best, it wasn't very sunny when I was doing it :(
I did make a video too but my iMovie is being really silly so it's not letting me crop it down, but if you'd like me to put it on just message me :)
If anyone has a go at this, take a picture and send me the link! I'd love to see your outcome.
Ruth xx
aww :) it looks soo good, tomorrow I´ll have a try and do this..thank you for this inspiration!
♥madeleine maria
www.kerensa-n.blogspot.com