Kiwi splash nails tutorial

Excuse the lack of tutorials for last week but I got too absorbed into other projects. This week has been no different but I could salvage some minutes to paint a nail and write this text! I went with another summer fruit inspiration for nails. I don't know if you remember the deep lore of me doing a kiwi nail set last year on stream, but this year I went for a simpler version that I can show you:

 

I know it looks messy specially in the center, but that's the top coat's fault. Trust me, you'll see. For now, it's see what do you need to create this kiwi:

 

The polishes I'm using are mostly Sally Hansen. I would have used the white of the collection if I had it available, honestly, but I just didn't:

• Wild & Young (previously known as Pinkduck) Sweet PWR #398
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pride 772 Thorn This Way
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pride 768 It's Giving

Again, I would probably have used the white of this collection if I had it with me, but I am not someone with huge nail polish budget so I have to restrain myself and go only for the greens with few exceptions. I paint my nails green anyways! Let's start painting our white base. Don't worry too much about making it a flawless even coat, because we're going to do gradients on top, we just want something to help up with the coverage:

 

 Next up, the promised gradient. We're going to go for what it's called lately an aura style gradient, or previously a radial gradient. We want a colour in the middle and another in the outskirts of the nail, basically. You can achieve this several ways: either painting your gradient on your sponge as usual and just rotating it or painting it directly on your sponge. I did the latter with a sponge that was basically the same size as this swatch stick:

 

 

Carefully, build up your gradient to opacity. Don't expect to glop on product on your nail and make it look good. It won't. Thin layers and persistence is key. This style of gradients is harder due to the border between colours being in so many different places around the nail that it's impossible to fix a corner without messing up another so be patient and trust the process, you've got this:

 

This is probably not the best gradient ever. But we're going to cover up the mess with the kiwi's seeds, because we're good at solving issues. Use a dotting tool with your black polish and ever so slightly drag the dot to make it not a perfect circle. You want it to seem like it points towards the center of the nail, as that's the pattern kiwi seeds come naturally. Do a circle around the kiwi in the intersection between the green and white, tightly packed together but not so tight that there's no space inbetween:

 

 

Notice that the result is very uneven, but a top coat will resolve that. I wanted to demonstrate it with a bottle of my previous favourite top coat, but they changed the formula so much that I don't use it in my manicures anymore. And it showed exactly why! See, when I applied the top coat to this nail, after cautionary minutes and floating the brush to avoid smearing the dots, this happened:

It did two distinct things: It clumped up in the middle creating some sort of top coat rock floating on my nail that I couldn't get rid of, hence the crater, and it became matte. Why? I don't really know but my best bet is that it's due to the humidity in my area. And I'm sorry but I can't get rid of it magically, I live in a humid area and that's how it is! I think this looks cute matte too, hence why I'm showing to you.

Also, if that happens to you, my solution is using an old nail oil brush, it only needs a very small residue of it, and very very slightly paint over the matte nail. This is my result:

I'm writing this an hour after the fact and the shine hasn't reduced at all. The nail polish is dry though it's not as quick dry as this product initially is, so I'd suggest not repurchasing and looking for recomendations of other top coats.

I apologize for the lack of tutorial last week, but the heat wave wearing off and family coming to town made it very difficult to balance everything out and this week, it was the nail art the one that got culled. I don't really have more plans for nail arts until the spooky season, so expect a bit of random things in the meantime!