Friday, July 26, 2013

No Sponge Gradient (Essie Lilacism and Essie Pop Art Pink)

Hi!

It feels like its been a week since I've posted, but its been more - sorry about that.

Today I have a simple manicure inspired by this post on the Chalkboard Nail blog that illustrates a no sponge gradient manicure! I haven't had the greatest success when trying sponge gradients, so I was super excited to give this a try!

First I applied Essie's Lilacism, a beautiful lilac/lavender color. This polish takes 3 coats for full opacity.


Next, I did 3 coats (and a little extra for touch up) of Essie's Pop Art Pink, and painted less of the nail each coat to create a gradient effect.. I hope that makes sense! I topped it off with Sally Hansen Hard As Wraps.


I love these colors together, I'd been wanting to do something interesting with them for ages. 

If you decide to try this, here are a few things to keep in mind that I learned with this manicure. Make sure you use very thin coats to make the manicure less thick. I would also recommend waiting a few minutes between coats to help with it drying. The top coat makes it look much more seamless! Once I was finished I wasn't happy with the results, but after a top coat - magic!

Unfortunately, once it fully dried, I noticed it got all bubbled up!


Its hard to see here - you can tell mostly on the middle finger, but all of my nails are pretty bubbly. Sadface!

Thanks for reading!

4 comments:

Sarah Thompson said...

The colors look so pretty together! :)

Catnapsch said...

Thank you Sarah!

Lucy (the Nail Snail) said...

Those are gorgeous colors -- and the sponge gradient worked out really well! So sad about the bubbles, though :( I wonder how that happened...

Catnapsch said...

I think it was due to having so many layers since both colors are a bit sheer. Next time I'm going to try more opaque colors and let it dry a bit longer between coats. Thanks for reading!!

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