I’ve been ill all week and finally on Thursday I felt up to painting my nails (my main motivation – my current polish was super chipped and I was going to buy an iPad on Friday – I like to have nice nails when I shop).  I quite literally spent all day feeling sorry for myself on the couch and thinking about this manicure and trying to decide what colour to do the gradient in.  My inspiration came from a guest post I saw on Oooh, Shinies not long ago by Ivana Thinks Pink (both amazing blogs you should check out if you haven’t already).  I’ve seen lots of gradient manicures before with animal prints stamped over them, but I particularly liked the pink.

So this is my version – I wanted it to be super sparkly, so I went with three China Glaze glass flecked polishes – the base/bottom colour is Strawberry Fields, the middle colour is Ahoy! (I can never get enough of this polish) and the tip colour is Senorita Bonita.  With a slightly darker colour on the tips, this would have been the perfect Breaking Dawn gradient.  Just a week too late.  I then stamped it with the tiger stripe full nail design from Konad plate M57 using Konad special black polish.  Unfortunately pink is my camera’s worst enemy so you can’t tell the difference really between Strawberry Fields and Ahoy!  Also these photos were taken under artificial light as I haven’t seen anything but rain here in Sydney all week.

The only thing I didn’t like about this was the cleanup – that black polish is so pigmented, it takes forever to get everything clean and tidy.  I was surprised at how easy a gradient manicure is with a sponge and I’m thinking about doing some more as I have some special events coming up.  Next weekend I have a family wedding so I’m trying to come up with a more subtle combo, then the weekend after that I have a 60s themed Christmas party…the potential options there are exponential!