MANI MONDAY: Matte Summer Sunset Gradient Nails
Happy Monday, everyone! For this month's #CBBxManiMonday theme, we're doing something a little bit different with what I've been thinking of as Nail Art Roulette. We chose 5 colour stories (sunset, rainbow, pink, black & white, and neon) and 5 themes (gradient, packaging inspired, matte, texture and minimalist) and then each of us randomly generated which pairings we're working with for each week. For this first week, the colour story I got was "Sunset" and the theme I got was "Matte" - and I have to tell you, I was SUPER excited about this pairing. Sunsets are one of the most soothing things in the world to me and I'm 100% the person who you'll find taking photos anytime there's a particularly pretty sunset. I also really, really the look of branches silhouetted against a really beautiful sunset, which is why I went in that direction rather than the very popular palm tree silhouetted sunset nails.
Anyway, without further ado....
Though I considered thinking outside the box, any mani with a Sunset colour story was going to be a gradient and my favorite polishes for summer gradients are definitely from Color Club. I started with a coat of First Class Sass (a really soft, pastel peach shade) on all of my nails and let it dry completely. Instead of a white base, I prefer to use the lightest shade in my gradient because it's always just worked out better for me (and is less stark if I make a little wobble on my cuticle cleanup.)
For the gradient, I used First Class Sass, Wicker Park, and Pucci-Licious to get this really dreamy gradient that is loosely inspired by a sunset photo I took on a road trip last summer. It took three passes with the makeup sponge to get my desired opacity and blend. Admittedly, the clouds included in this design were actually inspired by a little mess up I made that left a small smudge on one of my nails. I didn't want to redo, so I grabbed a little ripped off piece of sponge and added some clouds using BornPrettyStore White Stamping Polish. At this point, I applied a pretty generous coat of Essie Matte About You Top Coat and let it dry completely.
For the stamping, I reached for my Nicole Diary L10 Stamping Plate along with BornPrettyStore Black Stamping Polish. I applied the same image to all of my nails, shifting and turning it slightly on each nail so that it isn't immediately obvious that it's just the same image repeating. For me, I feel like this gives a more landscape type of effect to the overall mani. I also added a setting sun image on my middle finger... although I'm not entirely thrilled about it and wish I would have left it out.
And voila! (Because matte top coat is notorious for smearing stamping and I wanted this to be really crisp, I didn't apply another layer of it after the stamping and just left it there.)
Color Club - First Class Sass
Color Club - Wicker Park
Color Club - Pucci-Licious
BornPrettyStore White Stamping Polish
BornPrettyStore Black Stamping Polish
Essie Matte About You Top Coat
Nicole Diary L10 Stamping Plate
Born Pretty Store Clear Stamper
I swear, I always forget just how much I love the results when I bust out my Color Club polishes and put together a gradient look. They blend so beautifully and have such crisp colors that they just inevitably turn out beautiful. Highly, highly recommend.
Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today to check out what color story and style the random number generator challenged them with and check back next week for more!
Thanks for reading!
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