Pink and Green Gradients

It's been a little while since my last post, but it's been a crazy couple of weeks with a Vegas trip, lots of work and catching up with old friend. Wendy was home on spring break from dental school, so we had a couple of girls' nights where we got together and painted our nails — those are really the best kind of reunions! Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to take photos of our Vegas nails, but one thing we're all excited about is that Annie did some nail art for the first time! She's picked up the art of using a dotting tool and did some fun aqua and white nails for our whirlwind Vegas evening.

I'm back today with a couple of gradients that I've been wearing recently. I've had difficulty mastering this technique in the past, so it was fun being able to practice with two different color palettes.

The pink gradient pictured below uses a base of two coats of OPI Pink Friday from the Nicki Minaj collection. With a make-up wedge, I sponged the gradient on using Pink Friday, OPI Japanese Rose Garden (which has a slight hint of a shimmer) and OPI Hoodoo Voodoo.

The green gradient didn't photograph as well — no matter how hard I tried, the top color didn't quite show up as it does in person. The bottom photo is probably the closest representation of the gradient. For this one, I began with a base of Essie Mint Candy Apple, and sponged on Essie Where's My Chauffeur (middle shade) and Sinful Colors Rise & Shine. In person, the Sinful Colors shade is rich and dark, but isn't photographing properly.

Gradients are great because they're simple, quick nail art that you can do in 30 minutes, if you have the correct supplies handy (some sort of paint palette, two to three complementary nail colors and a make-up wedge). There's a lot you can do with them — layering pieces of striping tape before doing the gradient like in this laser tape mani from Chalkboard Nails, for example, or even doing something as simple as adding a subtle micro-glitter on top.