I’ve been itching to try outlining my nails but have always thought it would be difficult to do. I also get frustrated with French manicures when the thicker white tip polish chips or flakes off quicker.

So, this manicure is a bit of a compromise… No lining along the tip, but some ombré to make up for it. It’s also monochromatic which isn’t very spring-like (though to be fair the weather wasn’t either so this fitted right in!!!)
I started off with a couple of coats of Rimmel Black Out on top of some OPI Nail Envy.  Then I sponged a gradient in white about halfway up my nails.  I had left my ring fingers as feature nails and used a new holo polish instead from Hits: Hefesto from the No Olimpo collection.  It was quite sheer, so I ended up using about 4 coats but it had a nice holo effect – a bit stronger than GOSH Holographic Hero but not a coarse particle.

Once my gradient was dry I used a striping brush to outline a U-shape around the sides and cuticle of each nail in black.  I did all my clean up last to catch the white from the sponging as well as tidy my cuticles.

Here’s the finished design….

Here’s a close up of the holo to show the rainbow effect:

However, the next day I decided that, as lovely as the holo was, it needed something else! So I broke out a new pack of gems from Born Pretty Store and used the black ones in a line of three starting near the cuticle to pull the whole design together.

Finished!  Close up, it isn’t the smoothest around the cuticle, but I was still pretty pleased with it.

Next blog post: Copper and Green