Vertical Neon Smitten Gradient

Hey everyone, happy Friday. It's been a pretty busy week but I wanted to help enable you all in case you hadn't picked up the Smitten Polish neon flakies yet, they are available in her shop thanks to a restock she had earlier this week.

In case you need a refresher, I reviewed* and compared these puppies here and here, but last night I thought it was high time I combined them all in a single look. So I have seen quite a few vertical gradients out there and thought combining these eight polishes would make a spectacular bright rainbow look!

To create a vertical gradient of this kind, I didn't use any make up sponges, just painted with the brushes. I would paint one side 2/3 of the nail in one color, and then go over the other side with the other color for 2/3 the nail. Leaving the middle 1/3 of the nail to be a combo of the two colors. 

So let's take a look at the individual nails and I'll show you which colors they are.

This is Aqua Opal (left) and Ice Pop Paradise.

This is Lazy River and Aqua Opal. 

This is Terra Opal and Lazy River. This is my favorite nail because the middle third turned out the best! 

This is Ignis Opal and Jar of Sunshine. Now Jar of Sunshine takes over here, but trust me, Ignis Opal is in there, just didn't layer well with the strength of the neon in Jar of Sunshine. I also have the original version of Ignis, which is why it probably looks a bit different than the website. 

This is Aer Opal and Pool Noodle. These two look the most similar, but they are actually quite different. Because they were on my pinky they had the least opportunity to create the middle third of a mixture, so the whole nail looked mostly one color. I have the first version of Aer Opal if anyone is wondering, I think that is why my Aer looks less purple than the shots on the website. 

These all retail for $11.50 on the Smitten Polish website. 

So I just thought I'd show some more love to these awesome neon flakies. They clearly deserve a revisit now and again, they are quite awesome in my ever so humble opinion. Do you have any of these? Found a way to combine them that I haven't tried yet?!

*These were originally sent to me as press samples for my honest review.

Neon Gradient Hawaiian Chevon Nails

So the other night I had one of my newer friends over and she so wanted to learn how I do my nails. She was very curious how to do gradients and stamping, so I broke out some polishes and went to town – having her mimic me as she went.



And this is the result. I ended up doing the gradient I had been thinking of when I was review the Indigo Banana neon collection and then randomly stamped the other plates just to show her something you could do with a design.



For this look I used Indigo Bananas Neon the 10th Element, Zinc Industries and Phlogiston Paradise for the gradient and then I stamped using my MoYou London Pro Plate 08 for the flower image and stamped the chevron image using my QA 91 plate.



And my friend's nails turned out great too! This was her first attempt at nail art and I think she did a stellar job! She used the same MoYou plate I used, just a different image and she did all the nail art work her herself, I just showed her how to do it! Really great for a first time I think!

I really ended up liking how they turned out and I ended up wearing them for two days. On Friday last week I had just about had it with how long my nails were. I was having issues typing and my nail length was really getting to me. But I was sad because I really liked these nails and wanted to show them off to my aunt who was arriving that night.



So I got home on Friday and decided if I was going to change it up I was at least going to get the opportunity to file/mani bomb and redo my nails with a pretty polish. But this time I started the whole process with the filing down my nails and much to my surprise my nails were not ruined! It was a miracle. I was so super happy I could file down my talons and not ruin this fun Hawaiian gradient look! As you can tell in the photo above, the filing did not make anything chip. In fact these lasted chip free until Sunday when I took them off!

So do you like this look? Getting sick of my gradients yet, because I'm not! :) Hope you all are having a great week and Happy Hump Day!!!