Rainbow Gradient Nails

"Rainbow: An arch of colors formed in the sky in certain circumstances, caused by the refraction and dispersion of the sun's light by rain or...Any display of the colors of the spectrum produced by dispersion of light."

Here's another nail post for all you nail lovers out there! Things that you will need to achieve this manicure

• White nail polish
• Multiple colours nail polish (I chose blue, green, yellow, orange and red)
• Make-up sponges
• Cotton buds
• Nail Polish remover
• Top & Base coats
• Glitter top as desired

 

{All the nail polishes I used except for top & base coats}

These nails look so amazing in real life but they were such a hassle to do. I thought to myself "Gradient nails using a sponge looks easy, I'll give it a try". But I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong!

Firstly I started with just a base coat and applied all the colours to the makeup sponge in a line (like the picture below) and pushed it onto my nail but nothing seemed to come off. So I applied a very thick amount of the 5 nailpolish colours and tried again, only to achieve the same results.

I then had a thought "Maybe if I applied white nail polish it would work", it didn't! I have no idea what I was doing wrong and why the polish wasn't going onto my nails in a rainbow pattern. The only colors that seemed to be rubbing off the sponge and onto my nails were the blue and red.

So, I removed all the nail polish and then re applied the white and started all over again. This time I used separate make-up sponges for each of the five colors like the picture below.

Below are the step by step pictures of how I applied each of the colors.

1. Apply white nail polish

2. Apply the yellow with the sponge to the middle of your nail

 

3. Apply the orange using the sponge toward the tip of your nail

4. Apply the red with the sponge to the tip of your finger.

5. Apply the green with the sponge to the top part of your nail.

6. Apply the blue with the sponge to upper part of your nail but still leave some green.

As you can see in the above picture that it was quite messy using the sponges (especially when that is my right hand pictured so I was using my left hand to apply the colors). I poured some nail polish remover into the cap of the bottle and then used LOTS of cotton buds dipped in the nail polish remover to rub away the excess color on my fingers. Below is the end result.

I decided that a glitter top coat would give my manicure that extra bit of something, 

What do you think?