31DC Rainbow

I'm sure a lot of people will have done a gradient mani for this but I went for it anyway and I'm pretty pleased with myself because I only used four colours to make this manicure and my nails are long enough for this. The colours I used were NYC Chelsea Cherry, Lexington Yellow, Lavender Cupcake and Orly Blue Collar. This is my first time going into a gradient deliberately trying to mix different colours (green and orange).

I use a gradient technique where you put the colours on a plastic bag and mix them a little bit before picking them up with a sponge and dabbing onto your nails. I use makeup sponges from Primark (something ridiculous like 20 for £1!) I also painted my nails in white first as this reduces the amount of coats you need to get an even coverage. 

Clean up is one of the things that would put me off doing gradients so I thought I'd show you how I minimise the amount of mess created. First I tape off my fingers round the sides and across the cuticle (as close to the nail polish line as I can) then I sponge on my gradient and carefully remove the tape, you can see between 1 and 2 how much clean up this has saved. I then top coat the design and wait a few seconds for it to dry before cleaning up on my skin with a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover followed by using a clean up brush to remove the nail polish very close to my nail and to create a nice line at the cuticle.

Bright gradients are one of the easiest ways to achieve high impact nail art but without the clean up they do have a tendency to look messy and unprofessional. I would recommend that you have a go but keep your sellotape and cotton buds handy.  On an unrelated note I have been approached by the Born Pretty Store to review products for them and I have also been given a 10% discount code to pass on to my readers :). My first products won't be coming for a couple of weeks but if you want any nail art supplies you can click on the picture below to be taken to their website, remember to use the code for 10% off:

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