Day 2 Pre-Spring Challenge: Pink

Despite the fact that I love pink, it’s not a colour I actually wear on my nails all that often. So it was fun to do a manicure using only shades of pink for my contribution to day 2 of the pre-spring challenge

I first saw scalloped gradient nails done here by normandlou and it has been on my to do list ever since! It was more time consuming than I thought it would be but I’m happy with the result!

I used: Warwick Avenue – Nails Inc, Pink Rose – Gosh, Sensation – Color Addict, Draycott Terrace – Nails Inc, Holland Park Road – Nails Inc, Princes Arcade – Nails Inc. (those colours go from lightest to darkest)

Pink sparkly rays

Not sure about this one. I ended up with a whole load of glitter nail polish after Christmas and still felt a bit festive and like I could put off that back to work feeling just a little bit longer by going glitter crazy, but of course it didn’t quite work and I’m not sure if this design did either really.

I was a bit stuck for ideas, and then I came across this video by meliney and thought I’d do a pink version with glittery polish instead of a shimmery one. In the end it turned out looking nothing like the original inspiration.
It was fun and bright and I don’t hate it. I just don’t love it either.

I used: Pink Rose – Gosh, Ruby Ribbon – Revlon, White – Bonbon and a tiny bit of Holland Park Road – Nails Inc

Pink swirls

I wanted a really girly feeling manicure so I decided to use two different shades of pink and try to create a simple swirly shape on each nail. These were meant to look soft and dreamy and not too perfect, so I used a medium size brush to paint the swirls and didn’t worry about them looking even or the same on each nail.

I quite like the result, although the pale pink was much more translucent over the dark pink than I had imagined and it needed several coats so the swirls ended up looking even chunkier and less neat than I had imagined! In this manicure I don’t think it spoilt the overall look though.

I used: Sensation – Color Addict, Baby pink – Sweet Closet

Pink Plaid

I wanted to try using the striper brushes I’d bought on eBay and the tutorials made it look oh so simple.  I’d seen several tutorials doing plaid designs, some that looked simple and some  a bit more complex.  I chose one to follow which looks simple, but soon learnt that straight lines are a skill that needs some practice!

I followed this Easy Plaid Design video tutorial.

The straight lines in the video came out beautifully straight and even, but I found that my first attempt at using the striper brush and creating straight lines was not going to be quite so successful.   It’s clearly a skill that requires time to master, and one that would be really useful to have, so I’m going to have to try again some time.  I found it difficult to get the right amount of polish on the brush, sometimes I had too much and ended up with a fat gloopy line and other times it came out thin and feint and needed repainting.

My lines are a little wiggly and uneven, but I still quite liked the overall effect.  They looked nice from a distance and I even received a few compliments on them, I just wasn’t quite so keen to let any of my admirers look at them up close.  I liked the accent of the gold glitter paint – I wasn’t sure about adding it at first, thinking it might look over the top, especially as I was using a very bright pink base colour, but it worked.

Practice makes perfect, and I’m not giving up on using the striper brush just yet!

I used:  Sensation – Color Addict, Black – Decorative Nail, Gold glitter – ?