French Mani with Gradient Stamping

Hello luverleys, today I am going to show you a mani I did back in March for Mother's Day.

Since moving back to the UK end of last year I have set up shop doing nail art in my local town, and as most of my advertising is based on local FB groups, I have been trying to think of designs that will appeal to everyone, with different design images that will keep people engaged when seeing my ad over and over again.

I did a special offer pamper package for Mother's Day, and for the ad I wanted to create something that was pretty and a bit artistic, but would also appeal to women who maybe don't get their nails done very often and wanted to treat themselves for Mother's Day without feeling like they had to go over the top.

So I decided to go for a classic french mani which I think appeals to everyone, but adding a dash of colour and glamour with gradient stamped flowers so the mani still had a little dash of wow factor. The result is subtle and delicate but very pretty, and I really like it!

As you know I don't usually use props in my mani photos, I prefer not to distract away from the artwork, but as this was for a themed advertisment I thought it fitting to use something on this occasion, and raided my mums place to find this pretty flower.

As I have tiny little nail beds and really wonky smile lines from years of childhood nail biting and abuse, I can't get away with just white tips over my natural nails, they look ridiculous, and so I am always forced to paint a base when I do a french and it ends up looking quite fake, I still haven't found the perfect nude to match my natural nail colour. (Has anyone?!) So because I have to paint a pink base for a french, and I hate the fake look, for this french I tried something new in an attempt to make it look more natural, and instead of painting the base pink on with a brush, I decided to sponge it on, working from the nail tip downwards and fading out the colour as it got close to my cuticles. Kind of like a sponge gradient but using only one colour and blending it into my natural colour. I have to say as I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, this french mani looks a lot more natural now it doesn't have the obvious polish edge around the cuticle.

To do the white tips I used a large rubber band wrapped around the centre of my nail to seperate the free edge from the rest of the nail before sponging white polish on the tips, I just used a Rimmel white polish from the Rita Ora collection for this. Then I took the rubber band off, used a nail art detail brush to paint the corners of the white tip into a more natural curve, then added top coat.

For the stamping I used plate BP-34 and the same Caiuro polishes from Italy that I mentioned 2 posts ago in the advanced stamping mani, unfortunately every bottle has the same colour name label despite being different colours! I used 3 of them anyway, a purple, a dark fuchsia and a more orangey neon pink.

To mix it up a little, I added a Butterfly to the thumb instead of flowers and added some tiny pearls for a bit of bling after matte topcoating everything for a softer look.

I am glad to report that the mani did very well with local mummy's, and succeeded in bringing in ladies that don't normally get their nails done, so I was pretty pleased all around!

My mani was created with a specific marketing purpose, so I would love to see other Mother's Day inspired mani's that didn't have to adhere to any generalised marketing requirements! Feel free to post links and share your Mother's Day manis in the comments below ladies, (It's about mother's Day in Australia right now I think, so not totally out of place and time!) and I would love to know if anyone else suffers the same french mani problems that I do, and if they too have any success using the sponged base technique.xxx


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