July 21, 2014

Manicure Monday (71): Sugar Daddy

Hi and welcome to Manicure Monday, a weekly feature that combines my love of nail polish and reading. Each Monday, I’ll showcase one of my current reads along with a matching book manicure.

Hello, hello! Did you all have a good weekend? Mine was pretty relaxed. I didn’t get to go out to see any movies but I am catching up on Orphan Black Season 2, which is crazy and so much fun. So this week’s manicure was inspired by Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas. I am a huge fan of her historical romances but have not yet read any of her contemporary romances. I have heard a lot of good things about this series though and finally took the plunge.

I knew what I wanted to do for this cover immediately. The bright, bold colors just call out for a gradient manicure and I knew just the shades to use.

I created the sunset base by first painting on medium thick coat of an opaque white creme (Cult Nails Tempest) onto all of my nails. This gave my nails a nice base for the gradient. For the gradient itself I used China Glaze Sun Worshiper (neon orange), Sinful Colors Fusion Neon (light neon pink) and Orly Beach Cruiser (neon pink). There are lots of tutorials online on how to do gradient manicures and I would highly recommend the technique. It’s fairly easy and the results are impressive.

A layer of top coat helps seal and blend the colors. Then I just went in with a small brush and painted in the silhouette of the grass and the figures from the cover. The figures came out way better than I thought they would. They’re not perfectly proportional or anything but I think they are close enough.