Technique: Create Your Own Ombre

Surprisingly, this is the first time I have attempted an Ombré. I guess I have been so involved in new and more complicated techniques so I haven’t attempted it. This week is the 7^th week of the 52 Week Challenge and the theme is black and white. I haven’t done a black and white look yet, nor have I done an ombré so I decided to do this Create Your Own Ombré technique!

Basically the “create” part is just mixing some polishes. I really didn’t have the perfect colors for a black to white ombré so I created my own! Below are the 3 polishes I used. Black by Finger Paints, grey by Essie (not sure of actual name, woops!), and White On by Sally Hansen.

I started by painting these polishes by themselves on my pinky (White On), middle finger (grey), and thumb (Black). (sorry for the blurry pic!)

Mix 1: Then comes the mixing. For the ring finger color, I mixed equal drops of White On and the Grey polish. I used a cut off solo cup to hold the polish.

I just mixed it with the grey polish brush. You could use a separate brush if you are really worried about your middle color getting contaminated, but I made sure to drop all the polish I needed before I did my mixing. Then I painted both my left and right ring fingers this light grey color.

After you are done painting your ring fingers, wipe the brush you just used completely on a paper towel (do not use tissue or TP as that will leave paper residue on the brush). If you need to add a little polish remover to the paper towel, however I didn’t feel it was necessary.

Mix 2: Then I did the same thing as Mix 1, but with Black instead of white (equal drops Black and Grey). I then painted both my index fingers the dark grey mixed color.

Voila here is my black to white Create Your Own Ombré!!

Tips for the Create Your Own Ombré:

- Whatever you paint on your left hand, paint on your right hand immediately. This way is the most efficient and you don’t risk having mismatched mixed colors.

i.e. paint in this order: left pinky, right pinky, left middle, right middle, left thumb, right thumb, Mix 1, left ring, right ring, Mix 2, left index, right index.

- Make sure you make enough mixed polish to do 2 coats on 2 fingers. I used about 6-8 drops of each polish.

- For any ombré, make sure you use ALL crème or solid polishes or use ALL shiny polishes. It looks odd if you have a couple shiny/sparkly nail and the others are solid colors.

- Try to avoid sheer polishes with this technique! They will be very difficult to mix correctly and your ombré may not look just right.

- Here are some good 3 polish color combos that would work great for this Create Your Own Ombré technique.

       1. Red, Orange, Yellow

       2. Green, Blue, Purple

       3. Pale/light, Bright, Dark of any color.

Below is an example of a good light to dark blue trio. [Sea Spray by China Glaze, Dating a Royal by OPI, and Up All Night by China Glaze.]

This is super easy and fun! I will definitely be trying this many more times!!

 

Combo: Smoldering + Fowl Play

Yesterday, I was having a very hard time being inspired nail-wise. So I picked up a few polishes, walked over to my boyfriend, and asked “Which of these goes together well?”. I just love him. His response was, “Well, these two don’t ‘go together’, but I think they would look cool together”.  So this combo is all because of him, Thanks babe :). I think it turned out great!

First/Base Coat:  Smoldering by Revlon. This silver is really pretty because at first glance it looks like a plain old metallic silver, but when you move the nail you can see a little pale pink duo-chrome goin’ on.

Taping! This is just a simple vertical taping. Same old drill (Tape all of one hand, paint one nail, remove tape immediately, paint next nail, repeat…)

Second Coat: Fowl Play by Orly. I really couldn’t quite capture the beauty of this polish. It is so dynamic. It is a dark purple with a flaky pink and red glitter. I can stare at it all day!

Top Coat: Matte About You by Essie. I loooooove Fowl Play with the matte coat on top. You can see it better and it looks very modern.

Here’s some more pics!

week 6: inspired by a game

Week 6 of the 52 Week Challenge theme is “Inspired by a Game". I couldn’t think of a good idea for the life of me and then I looked at my desk and saw my Rubik’s cube. Not really sure it is considers a game, but I love playing/sloving it :) My best solve time is 1:26. I had to paint it with nail polish because I used it so many times and the colors were wearing off. Anyways, so that was my inspiration!

Here is my left hand with the first two colors.

Here’s the added blue. I just took my time and did it freehand, but you could also use tape for straighter lines.

Then I used a black nail art polish to do black lines separating the colors.

Here’s the steps to the Rubik’s cube I did on my thumb with the black nail art polish.

Here is the right hand with the orange, white and green polish. Turned out pretty good I think!

These are the colors I used. From left to right they are:

Pull Over by Sinful Colors, Why Not by Sinful Colors, Lacquered Up by Essie, Limelight by Ulta, White On by Sally Hansen, and Orange, It’s Obvious! by Essie.

Combo: Fresh Winter Snow

Ugh I am so embarassed. I had an old copy of the schedule so I thought that week 6 of the 52 week challenge was winter, but it is not! Whoops, it is actually "Inspired by a Game" so I guess I will have to do some new nails tonight! Darn it... the one week that I actually did it early haha oh well. Here's a pretty sparkly pale blue combo!

It's not quite winter weather yet here in the Chicago land area, but hey this combo is still pretty to look at :). I went for a simple combo of polishes to make a fresh winter snow look.

First polish: 2 coats of a pale blue or white polish. I used "I Vant to Be A-lone Star" by OPI

Second polish: 1 coat of a sheer, iridescent polish. I used "Rainbow" by China Glaze

Third polish: 1 or 2 coats of a pearlescent glitter. I used "Make a Spectacle" by China Glaze

Here's one more pic, but the one at the top of this post definitely looks the best on how this turned out.

Technique: Sparkly Pumpkins + Week 5: Orange

So this is kind of a combined post. Theme of week 5 of the 52 week challenge is ORANGE annnnnd I did a new nail art/technique, hence the long post title :). Here are my sparkly Halloween pumpkins! I usually steer away from any nail art that is too corny looking, but I just love these little cute pumpkins for Halloween. And it really wasn’t all that difficult to do!

First I did a coat of Peachy Kean as a base for the sparkly orange. I don’t have a picture of that, but any orange color would have worked as a base. On top of that I used Fall of Surprises! by Finger Paints. This is two thick coats of it:

So here is 3 pics of how I did the mini pumpkin tips. I did all this black nail art with a nail art polish (has a thinner brush). You can see my critique of nail art tools here.

1. Draw a vertical line in the middle of your nail. This is so you know where the middle of your pumpkin will be. It helps avoid having a crooked and uneven pumpkin.

2. Draw your two humps. I found it easiest to start from the vertical line I drew first, draw half a hump, then start at the edge of the nail and draw the other half of the hump. Then repeat with other hump. Hope that makes sense haha.

3. Then fill in the rest of the area with the black nail art polish.

After that I added a cute little green stem (also with a nail art polish) to these mini pumpkins.

For the thumb, I had a bigger canvas so I did a jack-o-lantern instead of a mini pumpkin.

The right thumb jack-o-lantern doesn’t look this good, but it doesn’t look bad. Just did a smile instead of teeth and did the best I could for triangle eyes on my right thumb. No sweat!

Here is one more pic with the nail art polishes I used! Love this festive look :)

Combo: Mint + Whimsical

I love love love this combo. It looks like frosting and sprinkles or some sort of dessert. I just want to eat it right off my fingers!

Colors I used are: Re-Fresh Mint by China Glaze (base coat) and Whimsical by Revlon (Deborah Lippman Glitter in the Air dupe!)

I did this combo because I was not too impressed with Whimsical by itself. Here is a picture of Whimsical without the mint base coat… this is 3 coats of Whimsical too!

So here is Re-Fresh Mint by itself. A pale blue opaque/crème polish would also do the trick! This mint is more blue than green anyhow.

So in all it is 2 coats of Re-Fresh Mint and 2 coats of Whimsical. For the Whimsical polish I "dabbed" it on to make sure I got some nice hex glitter pieces on my nail.

Here is a couple more pics… Yummy!!

week 4: GRADIENT

Week 4 of the 52 week challenge is here and the theme is Gradient or Ombre nails!! This is good explanation on the difference between Gradient, Ombre, and Skittle techniques (when talking about nails). I decided to conquer gradient nails this week. For months, gradient nails have been my archenemy. For some reason, I just could not get this technique to work. I have tried MULTIPLE times and things just were not working out for me. However, I finally got some results! I tweaked a few things in what I was doing and switched the kind of sponge I was using. Tips for best results are at the bottom of this post. Here was my final look:

Colors I used (from left to right): No Plain Jane by China Glaze (Base Coat), Good as Gold by Essie, and Swing Baby by China Glaze (accent color dabbed on top of the tips)

Tips:

-          Here is a good video (The Polished Mommy) to show the technique I did for Gradient nails.

-          Make sure the sponge is saturated to the max! If it is not super saturated you will get a bubbly texture that looks too spongy. However, in the opposite direction if the polish is not soaked into the sponge (just sitting on top), it will not blend well and you will have a hard line between your colors.

      Here is what my sponge looked like ( the sparkly color on the right is Swing Baby which I dabbed on the tips of my nails for a little sparkle)

-          Keep your polishes open so you can quickly saturate the sponge with your gradient colors in between rolls.

-          If you use a sheer polish make sure it is the same as your base coat. In the video in the first tip, she uses black for a base coat. This only worked because her top/gradient polishes were opaque. The purple I used for this look was very sheer, so I made sure to use the purple as my base coat as well.

-          Layer your “rolls” of the sponge so the line between the colors doesn’t always match up.  This helps you have more of a gradient and less of an immediate change between the colors.

-          If the sponge you’re using isn’t working for you, try a different one. The old brand of sponge I tried was making my look to bumpy and bubbly. These sponges worked out well for me.

-          Cut the sponge in half to conserve sponges!

-          For skin clean up, use a plastic cup cut off filled with polish remover and an eyeliner brush. Dip your brush in the polish remover and wipe on a paper towel in between cleaning of the finger. (after you use an eyeliner brush for polish remover, do not use it for your face again)

 TA DA!!!! I’m so happy it finally turned out good!