Gradient nails tutorial

 

In this post I will be explaining how to reach a gradiented look between polishes on a nail. Fading between different polishes has its tips and tricks, and we’re going to go over them today, as it’s a pillar in several nail art looks.

The only things that we’re gonna need are as follows:

 

Today I used three linear holos by Holo Taco:

• Holo Taco’s Mint Mojito
• Holo Taco’s Green Taffy
• Holo Taco’s Lost in the Woods

And the magic secret, a dense make up sponge. Make sure it’s dense enough so it won’t transfer itself to the nail you’re doing the gradient on!

You can use as many or as few shades as you want on your gradient, but I’d recommend for beginners to stick to 2 to 3 shades at most. I'll also note that polishes in the same formula work way better together, so if you’re having issues, it might be the formulas you’re mixing. Aside from that, it doesn’t matter the colour combination you’re using, it doesn’t have to be the same family of colours, but it’s me, I only own green polishes, so it has to be green!

Let’s begin working on our nail:

 

There is much consideration about the state you should start your gradient with, and arguments towards all of them.

You could start your gradient with no base colour (but yes a base coat!), as it will bring an unadulterated colour on the nail, but this can lead to opacity issues and requiring too many coats.

There’s also the argument towards using the lightest, and/or least opaque, shade in the gradient, as I have applied. I find this approach good enough for me specially because I usually work in a similar hue, but be warned, this can affect the result on top. A light dab of blue over a yellow base can lead to your blue needing an extra coat to avoid making it look teal!

So for this reason, other nail artists prefer to put a coat of white crème below, as it will have a surface that will make any colour pop on top and hide the nail line, if it’s a concern of yours. It works better if you’re doing a gradient between different hues so you keep those shades differentiated.

But in all honesty, these are the “basic” approaches. Hey, if you want to gradient those iridescent shimmery polishes over black, I’m NOT complaining. In fact, with experience, I encourage experimentation with layering shades to give a new use and look to old favourites of yours!

But enough about which kind of underpainting your gradient should or not have, how do we make pretty colours appear in our nail with a sponge?

You might want to protect your surrounding skin with liquid latex or a similar product to ease the clean up process before proceeding!

Instead of painting directly on the nail, we paint on the sponge stripes of the shades you want on your nail, and work quickly! Dab it onto the nail, lightly but firmly, several times. Move your sponge side to side while you’re dabbing to ensure your sidewalls are covered. Moving it very slightly up and down might help blending the shades better but be mindful of it or else you can mix the polishes too much. For this reason I personally find easier to overlap the polishes on the sponge directly to reach that perfectly blended look.

Depending on the opacity of your polishes, you will probably need two to four coats of this sponging. Paint a bit more of polish on the sponge between each layer, but not too much so it’s dripping wet. You want to see a sheen but not liquid on top of it, the goal is to release the polish on the surface of the sponge onto your nail and blobs of paint will defeat the purpose and make a mess. It is advised to let the nail dry for thirty seconds to a minute between coats of sponging, you can use this time to paint on the sponge again so you don’t really have much downtime with this technique, perfect for impatient nail artists!

And after two layers in my case, I achieved my final look! Don’t be discouraged if you need more layers (I used quite opaque nail polishes, but I can tell you that they will take more layers than applied normally) or the look doesn’t work great. It’s a technique that requires practice to master, and I’m not close to that level, as I cannot reach perfect results with more challenging situations and polishes!

Don’t worry if your surface looks a bit uneven, that’s the result of using the sponge. Apply your top coat carefully to give the polishes a last chance to blend together and you’ll have a perfect surface and result.

Thank you for reading, I hope you give this a try, as it’s really fun to do when you get the gist of it and the results are always striking.

Camouflage nails tutorial

 

In this post I will explain how to make your nails invisible! Or, well, as invisible as camo gets. The process is super easy and quick and basically requires no skill or talent to achieve.

The technique is called “smooshy marble” and it’s one of the many ways you can get a look with several colours touching each other in erratic ways but still distinct.

I don’t want to make a lengthy introduction so you can get directly to the topic, so for this design you will need the following:

 

I used a beige, an olive green and an army green nail polish:

• Mixture made by myself that got tarnished and I desperately wanted to get rid of
• Wild & Young (previously known as Pinkduck) Wild Life Nº406
• Wild & Young (previously known as Pinkduck) Major Collection Nº336

Of course, you don’t need the exact same polishes I used, that would be a fool’s errand. This technique is quite versatile and works with basically any combination of colours, I just like these together.

The last tool, and the magic for this, is a stamper. Mine is a cheap one that I got on AliExpress years ago, and honestly, it’s slightly damaged now, but it still works for this technique. Mine is a clear one, but that is not needed. You can use whichever you have available to you or prefer.

After your base coat, you may apply one of the colours of the marble. I’d suggest the lightest one, or the one with the least opacity in your design. In my case, it is the beige mixture:

 

Do not worry about making the coat perfect. This is not a necessary step, but I encourage you to take the extra step for a couple of reasons: first, it will help build up a polish that might not be the most opaque but you want in your design, and second, it will hide your natural nail if you miss a spot on your nail in the following steps!

Then, you will grab the stamper and all the polishes, and you’re gonna place dots of the shades on the stamper head, like this:

 

I will admit that there’s not enough of the beige shade, and this is not intentional. I just didn’t have enough polish in the bottle to drop more. You can change the result altering the proportions and distribution of the polishes on your stamper.

And now, work quickly, and stamp it on your nails! You can stamp sections still on the stamper on barren places on the nail or just if you don’t like how a section turned out! You’ll end up with something like this:

 

Be warned that this technique most likely will get on your skin, but it’s quite easy to remove from it. Also, you can tell the texture on my swatch stick, due to sections where I stamped again and readjusted. That’s totally normal and will be dealt with by adding your top coat. Which… is your last step!

 

For this particular colour scheme and concept, I decided to go with a matte top coat, so you can see the result! Make sure to wait some minutes before applying and float it to avoid smudging your design and transfering it to the brush.

And that’s it! As I said, very fast and easy to do!

I have done this nail art before on my natural nails, so I dug up a couple of pictures of it. Believe it or not, these are the same polishes *and* camera! For some reason, today’s pictures got really dark for no particular reason. I used the same polishes but the beige started as more of a green shade. And my hand is better lit.

Mandatory introductory post

So, first things first, this is not your deep dive blog with grandiloquent words and deeply thought and researched topics and points of view. I’m Yuraite, a Spanish vtuber that also dabbles in mainly pixel art and nail art.

So, why am I here?

I decided to embark on new things to strengthen my passions and get some work done. And I realised I needed a place to engage with longer form content and even produce it! I tried other site before but their recent communications made me jump ship.

I had the idea lingering in my mind about painting swatch sticks with different kinds of nail art, so not using them only to swatch my polishes but to practice techniques for my own nails or just challenge myself, so the natural progression of this concept was doing it in a way that others could see it if they wanted to. Nail art tutorials!

 

Is this only nail art?

No, not necessarily! As I said (and showed), I’m also a pixel artist, and I enjoy working in creature design and vtuber related art. I am basically a self-made vtuber in pixel art form, and I’m dabbling in different elements of branding like banners for information and animation loops!

 

Fakemon

I said creature design, and I mean more particularly fakemon, as is an easy enough starting point for me to just try out different shapes and expressions. I plan to go back to that, and I also plan to use this blog as a means to post them with more information than what short form social media could allow me to do.

 

This will take a bit more time as I settle into this new year and have other projects to attend to, but I will probably end up posting some soon enough!

This is an archive of my progress

And I don’t only progress in one particular area. I will make sure to tag properly all the posts so people only interested in one particular topic can access all the posts of their interest without having to check out any of the other ones, as I understand the cross-polinization between nail art and pixel art is not the strongest one. I’m just an individual of very specific yet different tastes.

About other kinds of content, I might dabble in those, eventually, but it’s not what I expect this to be. So I’m not saying I won’t talk about videogames, for example, but I don’t plan to become a game reviewer, if that makes any sense. Be sure to check out my other socials for just less scheduled content, notifications of my streams, and more!

It’s a pleasure to write longer posts for you and I hope you appreciate them!