NOTW: Ombre Effect

Please excuse the state of my nails in general, I have been sporting this look for about a week now and have only now got round to taking some pictures for you!

I had been wanting to ombre my nails, but my first attempt a few weeks ago was far from successful, and very messy! But, not one to be deterred, I decided to give it another go, and this was the result.

First, I painted all my nails with two layers of Colorama's Pop Art Yellow and waited for it to dry completely.

I then took a plastic folder (just one of those cheap flimsy ones you put in ring binders) and painted on a generous line of each of the three colours I was using, from lightest to darkest (I chose Miss Sporty 326, which is a gorgeous bright coral, and 302, a pretty hot pink) . I used a small piece of sponge to soak up the polish and moved it up and down a little bit while doing so in order to blend the colours.

Then, I just pressed the sponge onto each of my nails, making sure to cover the whole surface, waited for it to dry and repeated the step a couple more times to achieve my desired result.

A couple of words of warning if you've never tried this before: 1) It is reeeally messy! Make sure you've got plenty of nail varnish/polish remover at hand before you start, as you do not want to run out and find yourself with rainbow hands you can't get rid of! And 2) The sponging means that the texture of your polish ends up being quite rough and bumpy, so you will need a couple of layers of a good clear topcoat to smooth things out and protect your artwork - I don't know about you, but after spending such a long time doing my nails and cleaning them up, I want them to last, even being someone who gets bored with my nail colours so easily!

I love this look for the summer, and love that you can mix it up with loads of different colour schemes. Next time I'm going to try some pastels and some pretty greens.

What's on your nails at the moment?

Have you ever tried to ombre yours?

xx