Stars, Stripes and a Sweet Gradient

July 01, 2013

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends! Today I have a quick tutorial for some 4th of July nails that anyone could do. For this manicure I used OPI I'm Not Really a Waitress, Sinful Colors Blue by You and Sally Hansen in Timeless White.

You will need:

red, white, and blue polish

topcoat and a basecoat

make up sponge

q-tips

nail polish remover

a small glass of water (not pictured)

Supplies

Start by painting your nails with a base coat followed by a coat of white. As you can see, the white does not need to be opaque.20130630_114741

Once the white coat is completely dry, wet your makeup sponge in the glass of water and wring out 80% of the moisture. Next, paint stripes of color onto your sponge so that the colors will be enough to cover your thumb nail. You can paint them horizontally like I did, or whatever direction you feel like.

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Align the sponge over your nail and rock it back and forth, side-to-side until you get the desired amount of coverage. As you can see, I didn't use enough polish on the first nail I tried.

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Reapply polish to the sponge after each nail and complete the rest of your nails to the desired opacity. At this point I decided to do my clean up in order to avoid smudging the topcoat. Take a q-tip dipped in nail polish remover, and gently touch up the sides and cuticles.

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Wait until your nail polish is completely dry before using a topcoat to avoid smearing colors into the white areas. I used Poshe Super Fast Drying Topcoat.

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If you wanted to jazz this up even more you could apply silver or gold stars before sealing with a top coat.

topcoat

I am really pleased that my first gradient turned out so well. Are you rocking something festive for the 4th? Link me up and share the pretties!

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