I’d like to take this moment and share my nails of the week with you, these are gradient nails that I made using O.P.I. polishes and a little make up sponge.  It looks complicated but it really is quite simple. If you want I’ll soon do a tutorial to show you exactly how to do this type of nailart that will surely blow many people’s minds this summer. For now I’ll just show you some pictures.

Okay onto the manicures. This, besides the sponge, is what I used for the one pictured on the right.

I used Alpine Snow, a pure white, as a base. It’s important to use a light opaque base when you use light colors to sponge as the sponged colors go on very sheer. Over that I sponged (from the bottom left to the top right) Need Sunglasses, A Roll in the Hague, Red Lights Ahead… Where?. Dim Sum Plum, Funky Dunkey and last but not least I put on a thin coat of DS Shimmer to give it the subtle holographic effect. And really that’s all there is to it! I know I’m making it sound like it’s a piece of cake, but really it is!

Now I enjoyed this manicure so much that when I finally had to take it off later that week due to chipping I whipped up another gradient manicure by just using 5 polishes instead of 7.

This next one I made by using a clean make up sponge and first painting my nails white again with OPI’s Alpine Snow, and letting that dry,  before I painted my sponge for the gradient (as you can see in the little picture on the bottom right of that little collage on the left there.) I went from yellow to green to deep blue using Need Sunglasses, Jade Is The New Black and Roadhouse Blues, all colors by O.P.I. I topped them again with OPI DS Shimmer to give them that nice holographic shimmer and after that they were good to go.

I feel there are a lot more gradients in my future and I want to try one with metallics soon.

But for now I leave you with the gradients of a few good friends of mine who all did their own version of a gradient this week for Gradient Friday.

I hope you’ll pay them a visit and check out their work.

And of course let me know what you thought, did you have a favorite, and will you be trying this technique for yourself soon?