Hi Lovelies,
I've been on a roll and created another mani with my old Essence stash! Who knew it would be so much fun to limit yourself to a handful of colours? It kinda forces you to make the best of what you have and be extra creative in mixing and matching the colours and techniques.
I've seen this technique a dozen times and it never fails to amaze me, it's so easy to create but the result looks crazy, like an optical illusion! For this I used 3 polishes from my Essence stash, from light to dark: No more drama!, Meet me now and Hypnotic Poison. Meet me now was actually my very first Essence polish.
As a base I painted two layers of No more drama! and let it dry. After that I sponged on a gradient with the darkest shade at my cuticle. I then painted a coat of Seche Vite over the gradient and I now fully understand why everyone raves about this top coat! It not only dried super fast, but it hardened all the layers of the polish, leaving a beautiful glossy shine!! With this I could add my nail vinyls without having to wait hours for everything to dry thoroughly and the base did not lift. Although I must say Seche Vite smells so bad...
After adding my nail vinyl stripes in different width, I sponged on two layers of gradient, this time with the lightest shade at my cuticle area. I needed two coats since the light shade wouldn't cover the dark shade properly. I immediately removed the vinyls after sponging on the second layer, working one nail after the other.
What do you think of reciprocal gradients? Can you pronounce 'reciprocal'? Because I can't, heh.
