I’ve been slacking the last couple of weeks with my blogging because I’m finally on holidays and I’ve been doing all the things that I told myself I would do when I had time! I’ve still been doing my nails every week, I just haven’t been posting them. So here are my nails from last week. 😀 This is a simple black and white gradient I did with an accent nail featuring a dotted cross. To do this I used of course black and white nail polish, as well as a clear top coat polish, a make up sponge, a piece of plastic to use as a mini palette for the polish and my trusty home made dotting tool.
First of all I painted all my nails white as a base colour. This just makes sure that when you sponge the gradient polish on your whole nail will be cover in polish and also helps to make any colours you use pop. When they’re dry, take a make up sponge and dab some black polish in a line at one end of the sponge. Then dab some white nail polish in a line underneath this leaving a gap between the two colours. That space is where you will need to mix the two colours together to make a grey colour that will create the soft gradient from white to black. I know in the pic that there’s red on the sponge but you can just ignore that, it’s just residual polish from a previous nail design. Keep in mind that you will need to dab this onto your nails, so make sure your nails will fit into the polish section you make on your sponge. Also remember that polish dries so don’t take too long blending the colours or you’ll end up with dry polish that won’t transfer to your nails easily.
Once your satisfied with the smoothness of the gradient dab the sponge onto your nail making sure to cover the whole nail with polish. Don’t be afraid to keep dabbing over and over until your nail is covered, you don’t have to stop after one press of the sponge. Doing this will get polish all over your skin, but that can easily be cleaned up in the end, plus the colours are always stronger the more you dab. Usually I can get two nails done before having to apply more polish to the sponge.
Now, you can do this for all of your nails and you can use any colours you want but keep in mind that some colours mix better than others. Like blue and green will mix well because they’re composite colours, complimentary colours won’t mix as well but can still look great on your nails. If you want, you can add in an accent nail like I have done. I just kept my middle nail on each hand with the white base coat and used my dotting tool to create a line of dots off centre up my nail and another dotted line across. The end result kinda reminds me of a wrapped up present, which I really like. So that’s all, oh yeah I almost forgot the shiny clear top coat but that’s a given. haha! I hope you like these nails and that you try them out yourself!
Related articles
- Way Back Then: My First Gradient (thedalailamasnails.com)
- Gradient black and red french nail art tutorial (themodelstage.com)
- Ombre/Gradient Nail’s: Sparkling Cranberry (llewsoba.wordpress.com)
Nic Nac Nails 