Neon gradient accents

Hi everyone!


This afternoon we went to a reunion of my husband's family. Some cousins who live in Australia came over for a visit and that of course was a great reason to organize a reunion. As my father in law has no less than 12 brothers and sisters who almost all have children, grandchildren and even a great grandchild, when there's a family gathering it's like a small army getting together and this time was no exception. We had a great time catching up with all the uncles, aunts and cousins :)

Of course I had to do something special for my manicure. By now my obsession for interest in nail polish is common knowledge and the first thing they do after greeting us is taking my hand and check out what's on my nails and who am I to disappoint them with bare nails, right? As my outfit consisted of faded black jeans (not bleached, the real deal... I've worn these for over four years to get them to where they are now), a pitch black jacket, an off white shirt and black high heeled ankle boots, I wanted my nails to be the cheerful accent, so what better than neon to add some color? So I grabbed three neon polishes, a black and a holo topper (and added a stamping plate later) and combined them with this result:

indoors, no flash

I started out by painting my thumb, index and pinky with one coat of Cirque Memento Mori, an ultra glossy black that covers in one coat. OPI Lady in Black is still my favorite black, but Memento Mori is a very close second and may actually tie with LiB for first place ;)

My middle and ring finger started out with one thin coat of Cirque Colors Vitamin D, a neon peach polish. It didn't cover 100% but since it was the base for a gradient I didn't mind. I used Cirque Colors Nympho, a neon pink polish, and Cirque Colors Lean, a bright almost neon purple, and Vitamin D to create the gradient. To add a little sparkle I covered the gradient with two thin coats of ILNP My Private Rainbow (L+S).

I'm SO proud of how this gradient turned out so of course I had to take a picture:

indoors, no flash

And not just one, but also one with flash to show off the sparkle that is kind of shy without direct light:

indoors, with flash

Picking out an image to stamp over the most perfect gradient I have created so far (in my humble opinion ;) was quite a task. I knew I wanted something geometric with bold lines and enough space between the lines to show off the gradient underneath. I finally settled on a jagged chevron from MoYou London Fashionista 04. I didn't know if I wanted to stamp both gradiented nails (that is totally a word ;) or just one so I started with one nail (using Memento Mori) and after that decided to not do anything else as I was completely happy with the result.

Here's one last picture of the stamped gradient, using flash so you can see the sparkles as well:

indoors, with flash

Apparently my camera doesn't enjoy the confrontation with neon polishes so the colors are a bit off (especially the purple one) but here are the polishes I used, all nicely lined up for their mug shot:

Cirque Colors Memento Mori, Cirque Colors Vitamin D, Cirque Colors Nympho, Cirque Colors Lean, ILNP My Private Rainbow (L+S)

I realized halfway through the gradient I didn't add a white base so the colors don't really pop (although they are brighter than my pictures show) but when I was finished I was glad I forgot the white. I'm absolutely delighted with how this turned out and I think my nails look even better than what I imagined they would look like. I received a lot of compliments at the reunion and I even promised a few cousins we would get together in the near future so they could try something like this as well. I'd call this manicure a firm success :)


What do you think? Do you like my nails the way I did them? Should I have stamped the second nail as well? Should I have done a gradient on all my nails and stamp them? I would love to hear your thoughts :)



Cirque Colors polishes were bought from Pretty Polish.
ILNP My Private Rainbow (L+S) was bought from Hypnotic Polish.