A Nub Gradient with Some Dots. Le Sigh

Sigh, I broke a nail. Sigh, I have nubs. Sigh, my nails were a perfect length and I had to go and break one! Ugh! Nothing is more upsetting when you're nails are finally at a great length, you have a gazillion nail art ideas floating around in your head, and you break one of your nails. The break happened when I was opening a drawer at work and my finger slipped and got caught on the edge. It hurt, and could have been a lot worse, so I'm just going to count my blessings and stop sighing.





Originally, after breaking my nail, I was not going to paint my nails at all until they grew out. I kind of am happy I decided against that since these nails did turn out moderately okay. Plus, they gave me some much needed gradient practice. Looking at these nails and some of my original gradients, I can see how much I have grown. I actually just realized you cannot see any of the white polish underneath for once!





Let's take a look. If you don't like them, you can head on over to Hooked on Polish and yell at Kat. She is the one who after seeing a sneak peek on Twitter told me that these nails are blog worthy. I guess she is kind of right lol.













Base

Ulta - Snow White

Gradient

Funky Fingers - Mrs. Mint



Ulta - Tutu Cute



Essence - Ultimate Pink

Glitter

China Glaze - Fairy Dust

Dots

Orly - Liquid Vinyl

These nails were super easy. First, you paint on one coat of your favorite nail polish. Once dried, I painted the three colors for my gradient onto a make up sponge. After dabbing the sponge on a paper plate, I dabbed it onto the nail. After the gradient seemed a tad dry, I went over it one more time with the make up sponge. I then added a coat of Fairy Dust to blend the gradient together. When that was dry, I added the black dots, then finished with some Out the Door.





After I posted my sneak peak, I had some questions regarding how I do my gradients. The most common question: Do you wet the make up sponge? My answer: Nope! I have seen on Pinterest and other tutorials that other bloggers soak their sponges in a cup of water, but I have never tried this. I use regular make up wedges from Wal-Mart, as seen below in a crappy webcam shot.









As you may or may not see (depending on if you're staring at my next nail design), the sponge is not very porous at all. I do not think I would receive the same results if it were. I think the polish would get trapped within the sponge more and less would make it onto my nail. I typically paint two coats of polish onto the sponge before placing it on the nail. This way, after you dab the sponge on the paper plate, you still have a decent amount on the sponge to dab onto the nail. I start with my lightest color on top, then the darker, and then darkest. I try to overlap the coats a bit too so they blend better on to the nail. If you start with the darkest then move onto the lightest, you may mess your brushes up and ruin your bottles of polishes. This might be easier if I do a video tutorial...maybe I'll attempt to figure that out?? hmmm.





What do you think? Loving the nubs or hating them like me? Fan of gradients or are they not your friend??





If you have any questions, feel free to send me a Tweet or leave a comment!!! I'll try to answer to the best of my ability!!! Until next post, <3.

Colors Used: