Manicure Monday - Gradient/Ombre Nails

Hey everybody! This week's manicure tutorial is for gradient nails (sometimes called ombre nails). I previewed this manicure in my post Spoiler Alert! Manicures I've Done Lately. I am so excited about this manicure and I can't wait to try it in all different colors and styles!

***you will need foam makeup sponges for this manicure***

Step 1: Paint on a white basecoat.

Step 2: In a small bowl of water, soak the makeup sponge then wring it out. You don't want the sponge to be wet, just damp enough that the nail polish won't get soaked in as soon as you put it on. This is a very important step - the first time I tried this manicure it didn't work at all because I didn't know this trick!

Step 3: After wringing out the sponge, paint on stripes of 2-4 colors (depending on how long your nails are). Make sure to use colors that look good together, but have some contrast. The blue and mint green I used were a little too close, so in the end most of my nails looked just blue and purple.

Step 4: Press the colored part of the sponge onto your nail. Bounce it up and down and move it around a little so the colors become really vibrant. The great thing about this manicure is that even if the nail doesn't look perfect when you first remove the sponge, you can easily touch it up by applying more of one color to the sponge and sponging it onto the nail.

The result is a really cool gradient that everybody will be asking about! You can do all sorts of cool things with this manicure. You can have the gradient going any way you want, have opposing gradients on each nail, or even different color gradients on each nail. Have fun with it!

I hope everyone enjoys trying out this fun manicure! You can check out some other color gradients in my previous post Spoiler Alert! Manicures I've Done Lately .