Friday, April 20, 2018

Lava Meets Water- Gradient Nail Design

Hello everyone! Sorry that it has been a few weeks since I did a post, my allergies have really been acting up for the longest and I finally decided to go back to the allergy specialist and I unfortunately have to get allergy shots now, but hopefully they will help. Also work has been very stressful as well. 

Anyways this week I wanted to do another gradient, their is a color combo that I have been wanting to do for the longest with some of the polishes from the OPI Hawaii collection that came out back in 2015. I saw the polishes Go with the Lava Flow and This Color's Making Waves made on Pinterest a few years ago, and it was put together to create a cool looking gradient, and I didn't get around to do it, until now. 

OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient 

Here are the few polishes and nail art tools used for this gradient nail design: 


Base and Top Coat - CND Stickey Base Coat and Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat.

Nail Polishes- OPI Hawaii- Go with the Lava Flow and OPI Hawaii- This Color's Making Waves.

Nail art tools- Liquid latex for easy clean up (if you have a latex allergy do not use this!) and makeup sponge to create the gradient.  

Other- Tweezers to peel of latex (not in photo above)

That's all you need! 

Let's start this colorful nail design! I don't know about all of you, but I am tired of this long never ending winter and just wanted to create a colorful nail look.

OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient  
OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient 

Start off with a thin layer of base coat to protect your nail and to help your polish to last.

Let your base coat dry, and then polish all of your nail with This Color's Making Waves a blueish- green polish with some gold shimmer in it, Go with the Lava Flow the pinkish, Coral, orange (it depends on the light) with gold shimmer in it, we will use for the tips of the nails.  

Let this dry as well and then we can start the gradient part. Also just to make the clean up a little easier we will put liquid latex on the sides and near the cuticles, that way we can just peel for the mess. Make sure to put two layers of the liquid latex on, I made the mistake of only putting one layer and I still had a big mess to clean up around my fingers.

 OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient
 OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient

Now take your makeup sponge and polish the two colors, This Color's Making Waves and Go With The Lava Flow overlapping each other, then place the sponge on the nail and start to blend the polishes together to create a gradient, you will need to do this one more time to be opaque. 

I often find that this does not always work as well for me, so I did the above step and then sponged on each color one at a time for the secound layer, starting with Go With The Lava Flow near the tips of the nails, then taking This Color's Making Waves and slightly over lapping the sponging with Go With The Lava Flow, to try and get the two colors to look like they are blending together.

Once you have your gradient the way you like with some tweezers peel of the liquid latex, hopefully you will not have as big of a mess as I did after, it was kind of a pain to clean up with acetone and a clean up brush.      

OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient
 OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient
   OPI Hawaii, Go with the Lava Flow and this Color's Making Waves Gradient 

For this design it is fine to top coat when it is not fully dry, I always like to wait until my nail polish it pretty much dry before top coating, but in this case it is okay to top coat sooner because it seem to smooth out the sponge marks that are sometimes left behind.

Hope all of you enjoyed this bright gradient nail design, here at M.M.M we are all about the bright and fun colored polishes!

See you next time for more nail fun!