33 Day Challenge: 3 Colour Gradient and Pattern

I'm back on the challenge which means I have a lot more free time to play with polishes :). I was a bit conflicted with the three colour gradient and a pattern prompt for day 22 of the challenge because my gradient attempts can be a bit of a hit and miss and I had just done an awesome one a couple of weeks ago. I created a three colour gradient last night but it turned out to be a miss and I couldn't recycle the last one because it didn't have a pattern plus that's not really the point of a challenge, is it?

I stuck to what I knew would work for me and chose three Topshop polishes for the gradient and striping tape. I started with a two-coat base of Queen of Green (QoG), which you may have guessed is the green closest to the cuticle. I then sponged on, from cuticle to tip, QoG, Wisdom and Zodiac and smoothed out the gradient with a coat of Seche Vite. I  wanted to put a little extra effort on the pattern side of the prompt so I tried to create some triangles with striping tape but as I was putting on the tape on my ring finger, I knew the triangles (some just polygons) weren't gonna be regular shapes. I applied one coat of Ulta3 in Black Satin over the tape and sealed it with one last coat of Seche Vite.

I wish I had done the green strip a little bigger so the difference between Zodiac and QoG would a little clearer. QoG is a silver based pastel green shimmer and Zodiac is greenish gunmetal grey shimmer with gold bits in it and they are both beautiful but I couldn't quite capture the beauty of them.

Or did I?

I really like the way this mani looks but it was a pain in the ass to clean up. Have you ever tried to clean shimmer polishes? The shimmer goes everywhere and it sticks to the skin like nothing else. I used PVA around my cuticles to avoid some of the mess but the cuticle lines weren't as clean as I'd like them so I took out the acetone. Bad move. After I managed to get as much of the shimmer of my fingers as I could with clean up brushes and cotton rounds, I still had silver bits all over my fingers. I had to use a nail brush to scrub up my fingers and use some cuticle remover to get rid of the stray shimmer. Lesson learnt: If I'm playing with shimmer polishes, I need to be ready to do a lot of clean up.

I just realised tomorrow's prompt is geometric but hopefully I can come up with something good and get my nail mojo back. Till then, check out the other timely participants of the challenge.

Mon 11 Nov – 3 colour gradient + pattern

1. Vic and Her Nails	2. Superficially Colorful	3. CrazyPolishes(Dimpal)
4. Glam-madam	5. MydailyNailDesigns	6. Polished Polyglot
7. cristina nails	8. Sam @ FingerFood	9. Cambridge Nails
10. Claire @ nuthin' but a nail thing	11. Kerruticles	12. Pretty Polishes
13. Helly NailNewbie	14. SpecialGirl Nails	15. Penny Pinching Polish
16. Pearl (preciouspearlmakeup)	17. Be Happy and Buy Polish	18. manicured monkey
19. Enigmatic Rambles	20. Druid Nails	21. Hey, Darling Polish
22. The Lacquer Confessionals	23. Nail Addict	24. Glowstars
25. Nails Down South	26. Aisuru Nails	27. Life In Color!
28. Casa de Polish	29. MegsManicures	30. Lacquer or Leave Her!: Before & After: One does no
31. Lucky Lucky Lacquer	32. baroque fool	33. Crumpet
34. Light of the Moon Nails	35. Brandie Collins	36. Glitter Me This
37. Linziino	38. Nail Polish Society	39. Obscenely Blue
40. Lane's Lacquers	41. My Adventures in Nail Art	42. Not Too Polished
43. Cómo te pintaste

(Cannot add links: Registration/trial expired)

Till next time, 

Laura