Purple Ombre Nails: Sinful Colors and Sally Hansen

As you may or may not have read earlier this week in my Colors of the Rainbow blog, I picked up some new purple polishes recently: Sally Hansen's Lacy Lilac and Sinful Colors' Amethyst. I decided to use both of them this week in my very first attempt at ombre nails. Ayo!

This, as per usual, is easier than it looks. Or maybe it doesn't even look hard to you, who am I to presume?

You can use more than two colors for this technique, but I have pretty small nails so two colors seemed just right to me. If you have long, angelic nails then a) GOFAHKYAHSELF (jk I'm sure you're lovely) and b) Use a third color as well!

In addition to your polishes, you'll also need a makeup sponge. The cheaper, the better because you're about to eff it up. #DontUseYourMACSpongesLadies. I got mine in a package from Shoppers Drug Mart.

.  squishy  .

Start off by painting all of your nails one coat of a white polish. I used Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, which is my favorite white polish. It applies pretty nicely, is opaque after two coats, and is shimmer-free. The white base will make the rest of your colors pop.

Next, swipe some of your first polish across the width of your sponge, like so:

Above that, slightly overlapping, swipe some of your next polish:

.  YEAH i dripped. whatreyougonnadoaboutit?  .

Now using whatever technique you feel comfy with, start dabbing the sponge across your nails. It's going to get all over your fingers too, but don't even think about fretting. We're going to remove all the extra polish with Q-Tips dipped into nail polish remover pure acetone.

While you're dabbing the sponge onto your nails, it's probably going to look at first like the line between the two colors is too harsh. Just keep working at it with your sponge until it's more blended. You can practice on a piece of paper or something first if you're frightened.

You can add a second coat of ombre to each nail afterwards, if you'd like to make it more opaque. I did!

.  omg it's everywhere  .

**Insert clean up time with that Q-Tip and totally-horrible-for-your-skin acetone I was mentioning earlier!**

Now you have a choice to make about your top coat. I've heeeard that with this ombre technique, the colors blend really smoothly and beautifully if you apply a top coat pretty soon after you paint your nails, while the colors are still wet. It's supposed to make them really melt together. However, I was worried that applying top coat while the colors were still wet would really muck up my top coat brush with colored polish. I've had that experience before when I've applied top coat before letting polish dry completely first. It's not that cool.

So I waited probably a couple of hours before I finally applied a top coat to mine... and I like the grainy way it looks!

Also, I changed up the color order on each hand. On the left hand I did the Lacy Lilac at my cuticle, Amethyst at the fingertip. I did the opposite on my right hand.

What do you think of the ombre look? If you don't have the energy to do this to all of your nails, try it as an accent nail!