Showing posts with label essie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essie. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Purple Ombre Nails (Tutorial)

Ombre is one of the biggest trends this year. Whether it's ombre hair, ombre clothing, ombre eyes/lips. It's everywhere, so of course it needs to be incorporated on the nails as well :)



Here are my purple ombre nails. The key to a nice ombre is to use colors that are a few shades darker/lighter from each other. You can also create ombre nails from a blue to an orange for example, but the blending process will be a little harder since the colors aren't similar.
If you'd like to see how I did this, keep reading!



What you'll need :


Here I have a matte top coat (optional), 4 different shades of purple and a makeup sponge. From left to right : NYC- Matte Me Crazy, Essie- Nice is Nice, China Glaze- Spontaneous, China Glaze- Coconut Kiss and OPI- Siberian Nights.




Step 1: You'll need to apply a white or nude color on every nail as your base, this will help the next set of colors pop. Wait for this to dry completely. This is OPI- Sweet Heart (it was not shown in the picture above.)




Step 2: Dampen your makeup sponge and wring out any excess water. This will help your polish stay on the surface and not soak so far into the sponge. Take your polishes, and apply a line for each color, going from light to dark.




Step 3: Line your sponge up on your nail and press down. If you like where all of your colors are placed, you can then blend the colors by bouncing the sponge on top of the nail. Be careful. You don't want to over-do it or the sponge will start to pull your color up instead of laying it down.




Step 4: Apply the first coat with your sponge on every nail. By the time you're finished with your last nail, your first one should be dry enough for the second coat. Apply as many coats as you see fit. Here I've applied 3 coats. You'll notice that your sponge will leave a little bit of a bumpy finish (you can see in the picture) But don't worry. Once you add your top coat, it'll even everything out.



Step 5: Clean up time! I like to pour a bit of acetone in the bottle cap and dip my cotton swab into that. It's much more convenient.




Step 6: Once your nails are all clean, you can then add a top coat. As you can see, the nail texture has evened itself out.




Step 7: You can stop there or choose to add a matte top coat like I did. It was hard for me to decide what finish I liked better, so I just ended up sticking with this one!


Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial. It's simple and the results are pretty! What's better than that?! As always, feel free to leave any comments/questions below.


Happy sponging! ;)
Aubrey

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Purple Pastel Mani

Today I decided on a simple color and no nail art.. pretty crazy huh? I have an interview tomorrow and I didn't want to scare them off with my bright neon pink, blue and green water marbles :)

This is Essie- Nice is Nice, and it's such a pretty color! I'm a sucker for anything pink or purple. This was sent to me by Tamara, aka @ohtammm - If you aren't following her on Instragram then you are missing out my friends! She's amazing!


Don't mind the dryness of my cuticles, I need to give them a little TLC this weekend. My hands have been getting dry lately; maybe it's my body's way of telling me that fall is right around the corner! ;) I'm sure most of you hate reading that but fall is one of my favorite seasons! As much as I love this pretty pastel purple, I love vampy reds and purples even more.


Hope you all love this color as much as I do!
Aubrey