Deep Violet x French Lavender Gradient

Kester Black French Lavender, Kester Black Deep Violet

I feel like I should do gradient nails more often. They're surprisingly easy if you don't mind the clean up and they always look fab! 

Anna from Kester Black sent me some of her polishes a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't resist starting with a gradient. French Lavender and Deep Violet are both from Kester Black's Winter Garden collection (which you can buy online and in store around Australia and New Zealand) and match each other perfectly. Winter Garden is full of polish gems but I'll flail over the collection as a whole shortly. It deserves its own post. I was so excited that I went from 'playing around with a few' to swatching the entire collection. I couldn't help myself! 

These polishes were sent to me for review.

Day 21 - Inspired by a Colour

OPI A Grape Fit, China Glaze Grape Pop, OPI The Man With The Golden Gun, Essie As Gold As It Gets

I love gradients and I haven't done one in what feels like forever. I knew that I wanted my 'inspired by a colour' day of the 31 day challenge to be a single colour gradient and when I sat down to paint my nails I couldn't go past purple. I love these purples together and they both have 'grape' in their names. They're perfect for each other! 

My friend Julia gave me Essie As Gold As It Gets for my birthday earlier this week and I can't stop using it! It's so gorgeous! I also added a light coat of TMWTGG to make my mani extra golden.  

Day 10 - Gradient

Deborah Lippmann Constant Craving, OPI Hot & Spicy

I know they're colours that are never meant to be seen together, but I love pink and orange and had my heart set on this combo for gradient day. Now that we're well and truly into spring in the here in Australia my nails have just been getting brighter and brighter! Bring on summer!

Day 3 - Yellow

OPI Houston We Have A Purple, OPI The "It" Color

Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. Yes, these are my "yellow" nails. And yes, I know they're actually mostly pink. Like most people, I can only pull off yellow in very special circumstances. I especially can't pull it off on my nails.  I've accepted this fact and actually only own two yellow nail polishes (OPI The "It" Color and Ulta3 Citrus). 

I saw this tutorial over on Small Good Things and it lodged in my brain as a way to do a kind of ruffian/jelly/gradient manicure where you can see the different layers of colour building up along the nails. I grabbed my go-to jelly and absolutely loved the way it turned out! I'd planned to add yellow somewhere to this mani, not just because I was doing it for my yellow day, but because I love how these two colours look together! 

Spots, Gradients & Stripes

OPI Hot & Spicy, OPI Dating A Royal, China Glaze Kinetic Candy

This manicure came about in a very random way. It was one of those ones where you grab a few colours, start painting and see where it ends up. I was watching The Good Wife (I'm super far behind, I only started season 1 last week, but oh my goodness it's a good show!) and painting my nails without really thinking what they would end up looking like. 

I started with some orange nails, and some pale blue accent nails. Since I discovered how easy it is to do gradients I've been a tad obsessed, so I added a gradient on the orange nails. Why not add spots too? Get all the colours on the nail! A vertical stripe here, and some horizontal stripes there and this mani was born. 

I'm still not sure if I love or hate the colour combination, but I'm quite liking the fact that there are three different patterns in this manicure.

Edit: So, I totally thought I'd posted a gradient mani before this one. Apparently not. This was actually the third I'd done, but the first to make it on the blog. I followed Sammy's tutorial at The Nailasaurus, which makes gradients super easy! Sometimes if I'm feeling lazy I'll just paint the different colours right on the sponge in two stripes, instead of mixing and dabbing it on the sponge, although you do get a nicer gradient if you mix them first.