Chevron Ombre Nail Tutorial

Happy February!

It's never too early for a Valentine's Day mani, amirite? This one was inspired by Pinterest, and it's pretty much identical, except with less perfect lines and slightly different colours...

Anyway, here's the end result (minus cuticle clean-up):

Probably needs one more coat of Seche, also

I think it would work well with any colour group, but the pinks/reds are good for this particular season.

It's pretty easy, and you could probably guess how I did it without reading any further, but I need to write a blog right now, and so here we go...

The wine is my Constant. #Lost

These are the items I used:

1. PURE ACETONE remover - don't EVER settle for anything less
2. Skinny long craft paintbrush
3. Jackson-Triggs Cabernet Sauvignon, preferably from box
4. China Glaze Tinsel Town (sparkly charcoal)
5. Essie Fishnet Stockings (red)
6. Essie Mod Square (medium pink)
7. Essie Good Morning Hope (pale pink)
8. China Glaze Platinum Pearl (shimmery white base) (not pictured for some reason.)

Don't forget to use a good base coat first, obvi

Begin by selecting which nails will get which design. The thumb is always a toss-up. I've decided to make it decorative, but I might have had too much wine. It's your choice, really. For this mani, the pinkie and index fingers will be the neutral, grounding influences.

Do your bases, then 2 coats of the lightest colour in chevron form. If you screw it up, that's okay. This is a very forgiving design, with lots of opportunity to cover up errors in later stages.

This pink is probably my favourite colour ever

Now, take that medium colour, and get a chevron out of it!!

I went over each chevron 2-3 times for opacity reasons...

If you couldn't guess this next step, you need to drink less

That's right! Add that 3rd chevron, in your darkest colour...just do it. Do it now.

My favourite step

Next, you're going to make a little puddle of the colour you're using to outline on a magazine, and get that skinny brush out, and paint thin dividing lines between your chevrons.

Remember that most people will be looking at this from a distance of 1 metre or greater (as opposed to an ECU on a blog tutorial), so it's okay if it's not perfect. It will look good, I promise.

Also, don't hesitate to use a new blob of polish for each nail. It's important that the polish is not set AT ALL to get it to transfer smoothly from the brush to the nail. Go ahead, be wasteful. If you get cheap with this, you run the risk of blobby, hideous lines. Don't be that girl.

Top coat is trickier than it looks, especially with that deep red up top.

Finally, you need to add 2 coats of the wonder product, fast-dry top-coat, that is Seche Vite.

Make the first one really blobby, and be careful not to transfer the darker colour at the top onto the lighter colours at the bottom. The next coat can be used with pressure to smooth everything out.

Seche is ideally applied while your nails are still slightly wet or tacky. I don't know why, but it seems to bond with the wet polish? Anyway, it sets in about 60 seconds and provides the best shine of any top-coat I've ever tried.

Ta-da!!! That's it! An easy and fun project that looks cute, too.

What are your favourite designs for Valentine's Day? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading! xoxo