Another way to do a sponged gradient!

Ever have a day when you see something that totally changes how you look at something? Yea, that was me last night. I was browsing nail stuff online (as I so often do) and came across people doing a sponged gradient in a totally different way. (See here and here for examples.) It looked much easier than the tutorial I just wrote, and it looked just as good (if not better)! I had to try it out!

This is so much easier than the method I've been using. The tutorial can be summed up like this:

• base coat
• 2 coats of white
• 2 coats of gradient stamping
• top coat

And that's it! You cut a piece of sponge the size of your nail (or just paint an area the size of your nail), paint stripes of the colors you're using onto your sponge, then pat-pat-pat the sponge over your nail all at once. The gradient basically forms itself, and you're left with a very messy gradient that goes all over your fingers!



I sent a link to my friend, needing to share my excitement over this find. She didn't believe that it could look so smooth and pretty. Then she did it- she challenged me to prove to her it could look that smooth and soft. What could I do?

I pulled out my China Glaze Electropop collection and started painting. I only did one nail, as a proof of concept, and WOW was it messy. There's really no way to avoid getting the polish everywhere unless you tape off your fingers like you would do for a water marble. I'll have to try that next time...

Still, the one nail I did turned out beautiful. This wasn't enough for her... she didn't think it looked smooth enough, so I added a layer of topcoat over everything to meld it together.

Even though I know how much topcoat can pull a manicure together, I was still blown away at just how smooth this gradient was! It was so easy, and so pretty. That's one stamped coat of rainbow goodness on my index finger there, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

She was pretty gobsmacked too. She couldn't believe how fast and easy it was to get a gradient look like this. She's definitely looking at her ombre nails kit differently now.

So of course, I needed to do a full manicure like this, but I was too lazy to deal with 5 colors like I had in my test run. I ended up sticking with three pastel shades- I'm fairly sure I used Dance Baby, Sweet Hook, and Kinetic Candy.

As you can see, it worked beautifully. The stripes on the sponge really didn't look all that soft and gradienty, but on the nail? Gorgeous pastel softness. I'm just blown away at how smooth the transition is!

Cleanup was an utter nightmare, much like trying to clean up a water marble is. I used cotton swabs, brushes and acetone, and still had a horrible mess to clean up. Still... it's SO worth it!

I can just see doing all my nails in rainbows. You could also do angled gradients or vertical gradients, based on how you apply the colors on the sponge. I really am in love with this look!

Although now I'm thinking it would be fun with a pattern over it- I'm thinking zebra stripes, or maybe leopard print. My husband laughed when he saw it and said my nails look like easter eggs.

So, what do you think of this look? Would you wear it? Would you change it? Would you put a print over the top of it? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it...

So many awesome ways to create pretty results!

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Tutorial- How to make custom sponge tools

Whew, it's been a busy few days! But I'm finally back with the tutorial I referred to a few days back. I'm going to show you how to make your own sponge tools for fun and interesting nail art!

Before you start, you need to gather your supplies so you won't have to stop halfway through and bug your family about helping you find the glue stick, the way I might have done here.

The list is simple enough. Basically, you can use whatever you have on hand!

Supplies for sponge tools:

• Sponges
• Don't feel like you have to use what I used! Use whatever you have around the house...
• Kitchen sponges, makeup sponges, whatever sponges you
• Scissors
• Sticks of some kind. I used coffee stirrers and bamboo skewers.
• Some sort of adhesive. (Not pictured)

After that, it's really simple- cut the sponges and stick them on the end of the sticks! However, I went to a bit more trouble and showed different options you have.

To start with, I used the sponge from an old set of sponge rollers I have on hand. This particular roller had broken, so I decided to recycle the sponge into a tool for sponging.

I decided to cut it into different shapes to see what sort of effects I could create. I cut off small round sections from the end of the sponge, then cut them into half-circles and quarter-circle wedges.

I also cut the sticks into small segments that would be easier to control. I eventually cut the ends of the sticks into points, but I don't have pictures of that. I kind of forgot...  oops!

Then, I decided to cut a small opening into the sponge so that the stick would go inside of it. That would make it a bit more stable when stamping, I think.

This was so awkward to photograph, since I needed two hands to actually work the scissors and hold the sponge! So, pretend this photo is of me snipping into the bottom of the sponge segment.

You can also use your sticks to just sort of tear into the bottom, if you like. It all depends on what shape the bottoms of your sticks are. If you're using a bamboo skewer, you can just sort of shove it into the end of the sponge.

At this point, you would put glue on the end of your stick and shove it into the little hole you'd made in the base of the sponge. Unfortunately, I'd lost the glue stick I'd gotten out to do this tutorial with as soon as I started photographing, so after looking for a good 45 minutes, I decided glue wasn't important and I made do with what I had.

Instead, I painted the stick with a glob of nail polish and shoved it in. Surprisingly enough, this worked really well! I did find the glue stick after I'd finished this tutorial (of course!), and used it on later sponge tools... but the ones with nail polish held up just as well!



Who knew?

And now comes the fun part... seeing the different patterns and stamp styles you can get with the different tools! Believe it or not, they really do look different...

No matter how I tweaked this, it was hard to make it understandable. The colors basically match up the sponge shapes
to their patterns when stamped onto paper.

Stamp pattern of the center of the flat side of the half-circle section.

Stamp pattern of the edge of the quarter-circle wedge.

Stamp pattern of the flat edge of the quarter-circle wedge.

Stamp pattern of the side of the round.

Stamp pattern of the flat portion of the round, by the hole.

Stamp pattern of the flat portion of the round, by the hole.

Stamp pattern of the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge.

That last photo shows what the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge looks like when you stamp with it! I actually think it's pretty... very interesting, almost like when you splatter nail polish from a straw!

So, the idea here is simple: don't feel like you always need to spend money on expensive nail art tools. Sometimes you can do cool things with stuff you already have around the house!

Til next time!

My mind never stops with the ideas...

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Nail Art Samples... I couldn't make up my mind!

Last night was frustrating. I wanted to do my nails, but I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. Even a quick look-through of my inspirations folder did nothing for me. I started three designs and gave up on all of them because my nails just weren't cooperating. Then Magic_Maid inspired me with a comment about trying a sponged gradient. She's nervous about doing it, so I thought this would be a perfect time to try making my first tutorial.

I will be, as well, except that as soon as I finished taking the pictures of the finished tests, I was so sleepy that I crashed hard. At the moment, all I have are sample pics, but I think they have value on their own, so this will be the preliminary to the tutorial. When you want to do something, do a test first!

That first image is the first design I fiddled with. It's got potential, but I'm not terribly thrilled with it. I'll think about it for a while, let it kick around in my mind. Next, I tried doing a gradient without using the sponges. That would be the pic to the left of this paragraph. It's definitely interesting, and I may keep this method in mind if I want to do firey nails anytime soon. But as for this as a gradient? I'm not sure about it...

The colors are still fairly linear- you can see a band of red, a band of orange, and then a band of yellow. This just isn't what I want. I want a smooth transition from bright yellow down to sparkly red. So, I grabbed my makup sponge and did test #2.

See the difference? This one is smoother through the colors, although it's still heavy on the red. But I think I'm getting closer to what I wanted. Tomorrow will be a test of not only sponging this style/gradient but also of cleanup. I don't want to have to spend hours cleaning my cuticles of sponged polish.

So, I'll have someone take pictures for me while I paint my nails in this pattern, and hopefully soon I'll have my first tutorial up. I've been writing tutorials for years for various techniques and procedures, so this should be a lot of fun for me. Hopefully it will be useful for you, as well!

Until next time!
   <3 Laynie

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Some polishes were provided by the companies' PR for evaluation.
See my disclosure statement for more information.