Flake Gradient nails tutorial

This week I had another social event, yes, another wedding, so I will show you a very very easy technique you can use at any fancy event that allows some extra sparkles. This time, you will need no special tools, even! We're doing a gradient, but with flakes, and I'll show you two!

Do not pay attention to the fact that my swatch sticks have a chipped corner. A couple of them came with this and... oh well, let's do them together, shall we? I mean, it's still a functional surface!

 

For this you will need two polishes, the base and the flakes. Easy enough, right? You can use a full coverage flakey bomb polish, which is what I used, or a flake topper. In this case, you'll probably need a sponge to really load up one end of the gradient, I can try that for another tutorial, but in this case, I went for full coverage because come on, I needed quick and easy nails that I could retouch just in case!

 

 I used these two pairs of polishes:

 

• Holo Taco's Mint Mojito
• Holo Taco's Mint Money
• Holo Taco's Green Taffy
• Holo Taco's Foiled Again

I'll address the elephant in the room, yes my frosted metals (all of them) are slightly tarnished, they're still usable even though the colour is slightly different. I have no proof or tests done but my assumption is that something in the frosted metals react with specifically the pigment in the brush of the bottle, because they are actually discoloured, and that is transfering to the base of the polish, making it slightly thinner and having a hint of a sepia hue.

 

In any case, time to apply your base to opacity. I used linear holos to just mask sparkle with sparkle in case things went off the hook, but you can use a crème if you so desire:

 

Probably one coat would have done the trick if I went slightly thicker, but I noticed slight bald spots. Well, now the technique. You want to grab a small amount of polish and put your flakes slightly heavy on the base, like a normal to thick coat, not a blob (or tip, depends on what look you're going for!) and then do very slight flicks through the nail. You can stop before the end of the nail. That way, your flakes will feel opaque or almost and they will fade to nothing, showing your base (in my case, the holo) below.

 

 

I stopped close to the tip, but you can do a second coat to intensify the effect or make the flakes reach the end of the nail. It's absolute personal preference. I did a second coat reaching the end of the nail with very few flakes and that's the effect I went with:

 

 

I wore the mint version for a wedding I had because honestly, it was a hot day and the mint shirt I have is more breathable yet still appropiate, but I stacked more things on top because I'm extra and I can't stop won't stop:

 

If you're curious, I layered Holo Taco's Everything Taco on top because that's like my party topper that I wear for any big celebration, and then a coat of Holo Taco's Reflective Taco because, as I said, can't stop won't stop. Hey, it's a very subtle effect but I knew it was there and saw it, hence mission accomplished.

Anyways, thanks for reading, I will see you next week with another easy tutorial. I will most likely stream it on twitch next Wednesday, be on the look for my stream schedule!