40 Great Nail Art Idea - Black and White - Reciprocal Gradient

This week's colours were black and white and my pattern was Reciprocal Gradient. When I first saw this, apart from my fear of tackling the unknown, my first thought was - OK, that's good, two nice contrasting colours - this should work well - er... maybe not.
I did also think, I wonder if I can do this with stamping since vinyls and I don't get on well!
Anyway, I decided to do it the proper way - here goes.
I started with a base of Barry M Cotton and then did my gradient with Barry M Cotton and A England Camelot. I usually get away with quite a rough gradient but with hindsight I should have made more effort so make this one a bit smoother. You'll see on the finished mani I should have extended the blended bit further in each direction too - of course if I had unlimited time I would have done it again but it's blogged as it is, and serves as a learning experience :)
I think the base gradient looks a bit like snow topped mountains!
Then once I had waited a good long time for the base to be properly dry, I got on to the vinyls part. These went quite well, and I tried not to get too obsessive about getting them parallel.
I did the sponging, removed the vinyls and hey presto - reciprocal gradient that was not a complete disaster. Definitely room for improvement as I mentioned above but it could have been a lot worse.

black and white gradient

 

black and white reciprocal gradient

 

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ILNP Birefringence (with nail vinyls and black stripes)

I am very pleased with the way today's nails turned out although they took so much longer than I expected. In my mind it went like this - paint the base, top coat, add the vinyls, paint using the multi-chrome, remove vinyls, top coat, done... erm maybe not.
I wanted to use nail vinyls that I'd bought from She Sells Seashells and I spent quite a while deciding what colours I would try. I didn't want a huge contrast and then it struck me - black and something that would look good over black - glitter? flakie? or... multi-chrome - the perfect opportunity to try I Love Nail Polish Birefringence. I knew that this one was a pretty powerful multi-chrome and I thought it would be strong enough for a good contrast against plain black.
I used Nails Inc New York Noir for my base, and added a top coat. I did wait a while before using the nail vinyls but I should have done the base the night before, it does need to be really dry. I then started to apply the vinyls, thinking that if I was going length-ways I would not have such a problem as I did when I did my Jack Wills style bold stripes. Actually the problem was pretty much the same, I found it quite tricky to apply the vinyl so that the stripes were parallel, they seemed to bow out in the middle, but to be honest when I'd finished that wasn't particularly apparent. Because I kept lifting them and replacing them there are couple of areas where the base coat lifted a bit.
I added one coat of Birefringence, carefully removed the vinyls and wow! this is some awesome multi-chrome! I added top coat and all the slightly smudged edges disappeared and there were these wonderful multi-coloured humbugs!!
Birefringence looks essentially bluey purple in the bottle, but it shifts from green, then teal through blue, purple, dark red towards orangey brown. Typically I couldn't capture the full range on camera, did manage to catch the rain drops though! Anyway, I captured enough to see the stunning effect and was delighted that the contrast between the multi-chrome and glossy black was clear enough to see.
I love what you can do with nail vinyls, I just need to practice and stay calm - these finished off way better than I thought they would as I was doing the mani. I do feel the need to say, the problems I had are not with the vinyls themselves - they are great if you use them properly!!
I think the end result with the length-ways stripes is actually quite elegant and I love the variation in colour against the black.
Lots of pictures taken over a couple of days but in the end I decided I was never going to catch the green :)

ILNP Birefringence

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 

A2Z Series - B is for Bold

Thursday again, so time for the 2nd A2Z challenge. Last weeks was such fun and it was great to see all the Angles manis. The prompt for this week is Bold.
Two things spring to mind when I think of bold. Firstly, where something stands out against its background, like letters or numbers or a pattern and then bold as in brave and courageous.
I decided I'd better do something brave, by my standards at least, and choose a mani that would stand out. On the whole, most of my manis are quite understated and even if I wear a bright, or loud colour, I would wear it as a block rather than with something contrasting.
I've just bought some nail vinyls from She Sells Seashells so I thought this would be a great opportunity to try them out, starting with the straight line stencils as I thought they'd be the easiest. And then, what colours to do? Inspiration struck whilst waiting for my daughter in Jack Wills.
I chose Nails Inc Power Pink as that in itself seems quite a bold choice (the name and the colour) and then the lovely dark Nails Inc Motcomb Street, as I felt that would be a good strong colour to wear against the pink. Power Pink does have a slight blueness to it, probably why I like it so much, so these colours don't really clash, but bold enough I think!
Well, did I say the stripes would be easy? Maybe not! The idea is simple, but I should probably have done a dry run. I never realized how curved my nails are in every direction until I tried to line stripes up so that they would be parallel, and how hard to place them so that the stripes would be equal! I got quicker at putting them on but apparently they work best with 1 coater polish, which makes sense. I'll use a polish that works for stamping next time I think. I did enjoy playing with them, and I will be trying again :)
The result is not quite the perfect image I had in my mind but I am pretty pleased with them and they do look bold !

A2Z Series - B is for Bold
Nails Inc Power Pink and Nails Inc Motcomb Street

  

 

Look HERE to see what everyone else got up to - I can't wait to all the others, and click on the InLinkz too.

An InLinkz Link-up