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 

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 

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

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 

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!   

Sea You By The Ocean- Gradient, Ombre Nail Design

Hello everyone! Today on the blog we will be creating a very simple design.This design that we will be creating we have done before, a gradient or ombre nail design, but I got one of the new polishes from the OPI Fiji collection and I thought it would look great with one of the polishes from the OPI Hawaii collection. These two colors ended up blending together perfectly, and I just wanted to practice gradients and these two ended up being perfect for that.

 

 Gradient Nail Design using OPI Do you Sea what I Sea and This Color's Making Waves

For the OPI Fiji Collection of Spring 2017, I was only slightly inserted in one polish from the whole collection, so I purchase the polish, Do You Sea What I Sea. The other polishes where just boring to me and I have seen them over and over in the OPI line, even the polish I picked out I have seen before. I didn't want to to a full review if I only picked one polish from the collection, but I will do a small one and a comparison after this tutorial. 
 
Here are the polishes and nail art tools you will need (which is not much at all!)

      

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

Polishes- OPI Fiji- Do you Sea what I Sea and OPI Hawaii- This Color's Making Waves.

Nail art tool- a latex free makeup sponge/ cosmetic wedge.    

Other- Scissors to cut your sponge into small pieces.

That's all you will need for this simple nail design!

Let's get started!

* Before we start to polish, cut your large makeup sponge into small pieces, you do not need to use all of the sponge, unless your small pieces dry up in between each nail.  

Gradient Nail Design using  OPI Fiji- Do you Sea what I Sea as the base color

and  OPI Hawaii- This Color's Making Waves as the gradient.

Start off with a thin layer of base coat, I personally think CND Stickey Base is the best.

Once your base coat has dried, paint all of your nails with a shimmer blue polish, OPI Fiji- Do you Sea what I Sea.

 *Just a note before we start, I do my gradient different then most people, I do the two colors one at a time, this just seem to work okay for me especially for this gradient.

 

Let that dry and then take your small piece of makeup sponge and polish a shimmery blueish green with gold in it, OPI Hawaii- This Color's Making Waves. 

Then starting at the tip of the nails dab This Color's Making Waves on the nail, making sure their is more polish near the tip and less when dabbing up the nail, you may need to do this two or three more times to get the opacity that you want. 

Then on the other side of the sponge polish the base color, Do You Sea What I Sea and dab that near the cuticle to kind of blend the colors together. 

Another way of doing gradients is by polishing both colors on the sponge at once, polish Do you Sea what I Sea the base color, at the top of the sponge and then right next to it polish This Color's Making Waves (it is okay if the colors mix together.) Then dab the sponge on to the nails to blend them together to make a gradient. You may need to do this a few times to get the opacity you want.     

 

 

 Gradient using OPI Hawaii- This Color's Making Waves as the base color 

and OPI Fiji- Do you Sea what I Sea as the gradient.

As usually here on M.M.M we don't believe in boring nails, which mean a lot of time we don't match our nails, from the right to left hand. On the other hand (my right hand) I switched the colors and used This Color's Making Waves as the base and OPI Fiji- Do you Sea what I Sea as the gradient. 

I think both turned out really great and blended together perfectly, these two colors as a gradient remind me of the ocean, which I love. 

Now for the mini review of Do you Sea what I Sea from the OPI Fiji Collection. 

 

Do you Sea what I Sea, in the bottle.

Do you Sea what I Sea is a shimmery ocean blue polish. This polish was very sheer and took three coats to be opaque. This polish is very pretty, but really their is nothing to special about this polish, it a pretty ocean blue. I think the gradient I created for this post helped to make this polish a little more interesting.

The Fiji collection has 12 "New"  bright colors in this collection; ranging from pinks, oranges, blues, and so on. This collection has mainly cremes and one or two shimmers.

I put new in quotation because as stated above and in other post about OPI, these colors I feel have been released over and over again and all OPI does is change the names. I mean don't get me wrong OPI polishes are good, I just wish they would stop making the same polish and just changing the names. They should just come out with some new colors. 

The polish that I feel looks a lot like Do You Sea what I Sea is I Sea You Wear OPI, even the name is almost the same. I don't personally own I Sea You Wear OPI but the salon I work at has the polish and I held the bottle right up to my nails and they looked Identical. I Sea You Wear OPI is just more glittery, that is the only difference. 

Seeing how I don't personally own I Sea You Wear OPI, I don't want to use someone else photo in my blog to show the comparison. So you can always look up both of the polish to see how similar they look.  

Hope all of you enjoyed this ocean gradient, and hopefully it will remind you of the warm weather to come, if you live in a cold environment like me, or just a nice tropical vacation that I know I wish I was on.

See you next time for more nail fun!