Tutorial: New Year’s Eve Konadicure with gradient and rhinestones

Sadly Christmas is almost over but today I was in the mood to try a New Year’s Eve inspired manicure.

Because I also wanted to include a gradient I thought that this manicure could be great for my first tutorial. Unfortunately I can’t show you the step where and how I apply the nail polish with the sponge on my nail because I would need a third hand to take these pictures but I will describe how I made the gradient as good as possible.

Let’s get started!

This is the final manicure:

For the first step you need:

Base coat of your choice
A black nail polish with silver shimmer, sparkles or glitter
Fast drying top coat

Let’s start with naked and clean nails.

Apply your base coat. I used one coat of OPI’s Nail Envy.

Apply the nail polish we will use as a base color. I applied three coats of Milani’s Charmed topped with one coat of Seche Vite.

For step two we need:

A glittery silver nail polish in a clear base
Image plate with a full nail motif of your choice, preferably no floral motif
Stamper

I used Zoya’s Trixie as a stamping polish because it is full of silver glitter in a clear base and the glitter is dense enough to show up on your nail.

I love how Trixie looks stamped over Charmed and this manicure by itself would be really pretty for New Year’s Eve, too.
The Konad image plate I used was m51.

But I wanted to add more bling so I continued.

For step three you need:

A glittery nail polish with a light gray base color
Either a nail art sponge or any other spongy material

Now this is the step where I could have needed a third hand to take pictures while I was dabbing the sponge with the nail polish on my nails. Because I haven’t bought any nail art sponges yet I used a spongy packaging material I had at home, rolled it up and fixed it with scotch tape.

Then I put masking tape from the hardware store around my nails. I prefer masking tape over scotch tape for this step because the masking tape is more flexible.

For the gradient I put a bit of China Glaze’s The Ten Man on the sponge and dabbed it gently on my nails. I started on the tip of my nail – where I wanted to have the most of The Ten Man – and dabbed further to about the middle of my nail. I repeated this step once to get the gradient nail polish opaque on the tip of my nail.

For the final step you need:

Clear/crystal white rhinestones
Nail glue
A tool to put the rhinestones on the nail
Top coat

I started with dabbing a bit of the nail glue on the spots where I wanted to add the rhinestones to the nails. Then I dabbed the Essence nail art stylist in the glue on one nail to make the tip a bit sticky and picked up the rhinestones and adhered them to my nails. A thick coat of Seche Vite and the New Year’s Eve manicure is done.

In daylight

In halogen lighting

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you find it useful.

Tags: black, glitter, gradient, Konad, m51, rhinestones, silver
Posted in KOTDs, Tutorials |