Challenge Day 10: Grassy Green Gradient!

Today's challenge was a gradient mani and I didn't want to do the typical sponged gradient, so I did something a little different!

I think it looks like grass, which is I thought was a fun way to tip my hat to the end of summer.

This is what I would call a brushstroke gradient, and it reminds me of something you'd see in a painting! I really like the way it turned out.

The three colors I used were OPI Jade Is The New Black, OPI Green-wich Village & OPI Who The Shrek Are You?. I started with Jade Is The New Black as my base and added 2 layers of brushstrokes with Green-wich Village and then another 2 with Who The Shrek Are You?.

These polishes were great for this technique because they are not too opaque that it looks too much like stripes and opaque enough that they were easy to build up!

I love how much this looks like grass! Too bad it's a rainy, miserable day here, or else this mani would make me want to run around outside!

Tomorrow's theme is polka dots, which is funny because I've already rocked out polka dots 3 times this challenge, but I have a fun idea!

Challenge Day 3: Yellow feat. Some Lady Gaga Inspiration!

Oh boy, oh boy. I am so excited to show you all these beautiful babies. This mani came out exactly how I planned, and I couldn't be happier.

I had some inspiration for this mani in the form of Lady Gaga's dress in the video for Paparazzi (Single released in 2009... oops! I'm a little late!). Lots of nail art addicts across the globe have done a version of these nails. I knew I had to try it out one day, so here they are!

Remember the yellow mouse dress in the video? Remember the thousands of inspired mani's that erupted afterward? Haha, here's mine! Three years later. 

 

I started with OPI The It Color as my base. It's my one and only favorite yellow and obviously a pretty good match to the dress she wore in the video. While the mousies aren't exactly the same, I did it the easy way and did a Minnie/Mickey mouse print.

The mouse print was done with a dotting tool and a generic drugstore black polish. Super easy to create because the ears are the same size as the head, so you don't have to switch dotting tools or anything! Super cute. Maybe I'll be Minnie Mouse for Halloween and do my nails this way with red instead!

I love accent fingers. I recently became a professional manicurist at work as well as a hairstylist and one of my coworkers called me "the queen of accent fingers." So I did a "Cocktail" mani featuring the print and on the rest of my nails I did a gradient with China Glaze I'm Not Lion (So pretty!).

Tomorrow is green! I'm sad I'll only be rocking this mani for a day. Oh well!

Also, look out for a new weekly post I'll be doing showing off some manicures I've done on clients at work for the week! It will be like an Instagrammed collection of awesome. So excited!