Monday 5 May 2014

Work appropriate mani Monday: Grey and white gradient

Here's a simple twist on the traditional polarized gradient. Usually gradients begin with one colour on one end of the nail and transition to another by the other end. Here I've created a five point gradient using three colours (white, light grey, medium grey), but had one end of the colour scheme (white) hit the nail at both ends, leaving the darkest grey in the middle only. Let's call this a returning gradient since the white seen on one end of the nail returns by the other end.

The colours in the photos are a bit cracked out here, so I apologize for the extremely red-looking and overly saturated hands. Truth is I did these last month (you can also infer that by the length of my nails) and obviously I was a little sloppy on the editing.

To do this mani, I first painted all my nails with a white base coat. I then took three polishes (white = 1, light grey = 2, medium gray = 3) and painted them on a flat side of a triangular make-up sponge in the order as they appear on the  nail (1, 2, 3, 2, 1). Be careful not to drag or move the sponge too far up and down the nail or else your gradient will turn into a mush of colours with no discernible transition. That's probably the trickiest part about doing a gradient with more than a couple colour 'points' (e.g., this mani has 5 colour points whereas if you were to do a white to medium gray traditional gradient using the same 3 polishes you'd only have 3 colour points). This is true no matter what colour combo you are using.

I did not apply a top coat over this mani, but I did apply one thin coat of Revlon's 'natural' clear polish to yield a slight blend. You'll see why no top coat tomorrow. Yes.... this mani ended up being a base for a more complicated one. What else is new?





Polishes used: 
- Essie 'Power clutch' (medium grey)
- Sephora Formula X 'Extraordinary' (light grey creme)
- Orly 'Pointe blanche' (opaque white in 2 coats)




4 comments:

  1. Wow!! This nail polish is looking truly awesome and cute on your nails!!
    Great to look at your nails!!
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