piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 - Celebrating the Year of the Blogger!

Hi everyone!

I'm really excited to to be a part of piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013! The brief was to create some nail art using 3 shades supplied to us by the lovelies at piCture pOlish. It's doubly exciting because there are 3 awards available, with the prizes being the opportunity to make a collaboration shade with piCture pOlish. The 3 prizes are chosen by 1) the fans and friends of piCture pOlish, 2) the participants of blogfest and 3) the girls of piCture pOlish (Jules and Megs). You can vote on your favourite nail art creation by hopping over to piCture pOlish on Pinterest and voting. Update: You can go to the piCture pOlish website to vote. But hurry, because it only runs till the end of tonight (NZ time).

The 3 shades I got were 'Atomic' (a collaboration shade with the super talented Sarah from Samarium's swatches), 'Denim' and 'Electric Blue'. This is the look I came up with...

As soon as I saw 'Atomic', 'Denim' and 'Electric Blue' together, they absolutely screamed gradient. They work so beautifully together.

Right, let's get on with how I went about getting this look...

 

First, I painted my nails with strengthener and base coat, followed by one coat of 'Atomic'. Once dry, I taped off my cuticles in order to make clean up a little easier later on.

 

Next, I painted a generous line of 'Denim', 'Atomic' and 'Electric Blue' on some wax paper. Using a tooth pick I swirled the adjacent colours together just a little bit, mixing 'Denim' out slightly to each side. I dipped the sponge into the polish, tapped it lightly on the wax paper, then sponged on to my nail moving up and down my nail with very small motions to ensure a smooth gradient.

I have to thank Sammy from The Nailasaurus for this particular technique! You can check out her original tutorial here. 

 

I repeated the sponging steps 3 times, ensuring the previous coat was completely dry each time. After that, I cut the tape off and cleaned up around my cuticles using an angled brush and pure acetone.

This is the cleaned up gradient and at this point it doesn't look very smooth. I slapped on a coat of quick-dry top coat and then once dry I used a coat of piCture pOlish 'G'day Matte' (matte top coat) on all but my ring finger. On my ring finger, I used a second coat of my regular top coat.

 

I waited until my nails were entirely dry and set before I went near the taping part. In fact, I did the taping part the next day. Using Magic Tape, I masked off the lines to taper near the cuticle end. You could use striping tape here, but as I show you my dominant hand (I have to do all this with my left hand), I used full tape so I wouldn't go over the edges.

Wait for the previous stripe to dry and set COMPLETELY before taping off the next one. I can't stress this enough, because they will pull off with the tape otherwise and you don't want to have to do the whole gradient over again. Paint the stripes (I used 2 thin coats for 'Denim' and 'Atomic') and carefully pull the tape off - preferably while the stripe polish is still wet. I repeated this whole process, with lots of drying time in between, to get 3 stripes on each nail.

 

To finish up, I added some studs to my feature nail, just sticking them on by dipping a tooth pick into top coat, dabbing it on my nail and then using the tacky toothpick to pick up and place each stud. I spaced them in a way that mirrored the gradient effect on my nails.

Phew, so this is it. I quite liked the way the gradient looked once matte, with the shiny stripes on top. What do you think?

You can check out everyone else's manis by checking out #ppblogfest2013 on twitter and instagram. Also make sure you are following piCture pOlish. They can be found in lots of different places - Facebook     Twitter     Pinterest     Instagram    You Tube    Google +.

piCture pOlish polishes can be purchased directly from Australia (check out their Everyday Deals page too), or visit their network page so you can find a distributor closer to where you live.

These products were provided for blog fest 2013.

For more information, see my disclosure policy.