Dark Red Reverse Gradient Hearts

Hi everyone! First, a reminder: please vote in my blog poll if you haven’t already! I’m halfway through cataloging my stash, and I already have an inkling about which color I have the most of, but I’d love to see which one you all think is the winner! Expect to see a blog post coming in a few weeks with the results!

Today I’ve got some simple gradient nail art that, as you can probably guess, I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day, but didn’t get around to until now. It kind of turned out to be a #nailfail because the topcoat bubbled like crazy around the hearts, but I suppose it looks tolerable. At least I got to use a bunch of my all-time favorite red polishes, and it wasn’t all that difficult!

I used three red polishes to make the gradient:

• OPI The Thrill of Brazil (medium saturated true red crème)
• Revlon Colorstay – Velvet Rope (dark cool red crème)
• Sally Hansen CSM – Angel Bite (very dark red crème)

I started off by painting my nails with base coat and two coats of OPI The Thrill of Brazil, which is my favorite red polish EVER. I followed up by painting on a gradient of all three polishes, going from light at my cuticles to dark at my free edges. I wore this around by itself for a few days just because it looked so fantastic. Look!

AAAAAHHHH I love it! It’s so dark and beautiful!

Eventually, I decided it was time for the reverse gradient hearts to happen, which kinda ruined the gradient unfortunately. I took pieces of Scotch tape, folded the ends down so they wouldn’t stick to each other, and then folded the tape in half. I then drew a half of a heart near the fold of the tape. Then, I cut out the heart shape with a scissors. I found it easiest to go around the curvy part by rotating the tape around as I was cutting, rather than to rotate the scissors around. Once the heart was cut out, I peeled apart the tape VERY slowly (don’t go too fast!) to get a heart cutout, which I then stuck on my nails. After I positioned it, I sponged another gradient on top of the heart right over the tape, with the darkest color on top and the lightest on the bottom (the opposite of the original gradient). I had to sponge it over a few times, and supplement the lightest color with a brush, but it worked!

Finally I removed the tape to reveal the reverse gradient! I chose to do only my middle and ring fingers, since I didn’t want all my fingers to have the hearts. It looked so nice!

…and then I promptly ruined it by applying topcoat. I mean, it’s not the worst thing that’s ruined my manicures, but topcoat bubbles do irritate me immensely.

Yeah, the bubbling killed all the love I had for this gradient. Oh well. Maybe I’ll revive the idea next year for Valentine’s Day, and not ruin my hard work with a bubbly topcoat.

Still pretty, though 🙂

I hope you’ve liked my post! Thanks so much for reading!

– Emi