Ooooooooh for Ombre!

With all this dreary, cold and well, just generally horrid weather we've been having of late we can hardly be blamed for wishing the spring season to hurry a little quicker. I mean all this slush and ice is just snow good- is it? Sorry... couldn't help myself! But snowy puns aside, the weather hasn't been all that inspiring recently and well quite frankly, I don't think I'm the only one to admit that like the climate, I've been feeling a little dull and dismal and I'm beginning to feel like I need to inject a little colour back into my life.

Usually in this sort of situation I would dig out a pretty coloured, summery top, pop on my shades and off I would go. However, all I really want to do is hibernate beneath my thickest woollen jumper and curl myself up under a blanket. So, what better way is there to put two fingers up to the weather and inject some brightness into our wardrobes than through our nails. Boys, you might want to sit this one out.

I am a huuuuuges lover of nail art as most of you will probably already know and I love nothing better than having a little experiement now and again. In order to brighten things up a bit I decided to finally have a go at the ombre nail trend. It's one of the only nail art trends that I haven't tried so it was only natural to at least have a go and I think it went fairly well.

Recently I've been wearing lots of red, dark purple and raspberry pinks so this week I opted for a bright and bold pink to blend into my baby pink base.

I applied a coat of Nails inc 'Air Street' as a base, it's brilliant if you have really dry brittle nails that are prone to breaking or peeling (like mine) and I fully reccommend it-it's definitely the best I've ever used. I quite often wear it by itself without a colour on top to try and help my nails and I have definitely noticed a difference. Apply one coat a day over three consecutive days then remove and reapply like this for as long as you can and I guarantee you will start to see your nails strengthening. The baby Pink shade is 'Tendresse' by Chanel and as you can probably see, I certainly got my moneys worth as it's not far from finished! I used this as my primary colour- giving my nails two coats before applying the fading colour pon my tips. In this case I used 'striking' by Jessica.

Once these coats have dried, I then used a makeup sponge to fade the colours into each other. I found that the best way to do it is to paint some of the lighter colour on the sponge and above or below it paint on some the darker colour. A little goes a long way so you don't need to go crazy. Line the colours on the sponge up with your nail so the lighter colour on the sponge is above the light colour on your nail and the same with the dark colour. The next bit is a bit messy and wee bit tricky- you need quite a light hand, but then start to lighty dab the sponge onto your nail with the darker colour at the tip and gradually move the sponge up and down your nail. It doesn't take much to blend- as the colours tend to blend together quite naturally themselves.

This is the end result- finished of course with a couple of clear topcoats from none other than Barry M. There is definitely a knack to it, not quite sure I have it sussed- so there will be many more attempts to come!