Barry M Gradient Nails

I ended up giving in and buying the entire new range of Barry M Gellys. I didn't intend to get them but they were on offer and I love the Gelly polishes! I haven't really done anything interesting with my nails recently as I have been using a lot of textured polishes, so today I thought I'd go back to an old favourite, gradients. I thought the new Gelly colours would make a lovely summery gradient effect, so this time I have used Dragon Fruit as it is a lovely pink with a bit of shimmer, and thought it would look nice with Blackberry for a nice contrast. I'm sure everyone knows how to do these by now but I'm going to stick a quick description in of how I did them.

In order to create the gradient effect I first painted my nails with a coat of Dragon Fruit and let that properly dry.

I then cut small sections out of a normal cosmetic sponge. I got a huge bag of these from Bodycare for about £1.50 ages ago and they are perfect for nail art, I don't really use them for anything else. I cut them down as I think its easier to work out where you want the gradient to go.

Paint onto the sponge the stripes of colour you want in the gradient, not using too much polish though or it will drip. Then dab the sponge onto your nail, blending the edges between colours. You can build this up until you are happy with the colour. I sometimes find the colour on the tip of my nail isn't dark enough so you can sponge this on alone to get a deeper colour if you need to.

Wait for the whole lot to dry and add a thick coat (or two coats) of top coat to smooth out the effect as it can dry bumpy. This always makes a huge mess so I use cotton buds (the pointy end ones) dipped in nail polish remover to clean up with.

I love this colour mix, the contrast between light and dark makes a really gorgeous effect! I love gradients and will be using some more summery colours for them, they look so pretty!