Fading Nail Art

I was so excited on Saturday because my new nail art tools had arrived, yay!! I had been impatiently waiting for these since I ordered them and couldn't wait to try out some new designs with them.

As you can see, I went for a very pale pink fading in to an almost red background but then thought it needed something extra. When looking through a lot of other blogs and magazines it seemed that spots were a very big thing at the moment so decided it was another opportunity to use my new dotting tools and did some silver spots over the top. To do this design I used:

From left to right - my Nivea Calcium Power Base Coat (which doesn't dry as cloudy as it looks in the bottle), Seche shade Precious, Seche shade Rendezvous, Barry M shade 273 Raspberry, Barry M shade 319 Foil, Barry M Top Coat, a Nail Art Sponge (very cheap on eBay) and a medium nail dotter tool.

I first covered the whole nail in the base coat and left to dry (it's very important to let the varnish dry between each stage) then applied Precious, Rendezvous and Raspberry to the sponge just by painting it on with the brush. I did this in such a way that Precious would appear near the cuticle when applied, fading through to the dark Raspberry at the end of my nail. Then gently sponged this against the nail to apply the varnish to the nail in such a way that it looks like they blend in to each other. You will have to paint over the sponge a few times to be able to adequately cover all your nails. Once this dried I did the dots with Foil by pouring a very small amount on to a piece of cling film so that I could dip the dotting tool in to it and did the dots in a random fashion over every nail. Once all was done and dry I painted the top coat over to protect the design and make it last longer.

And voila, it's done!

I'm really happy with how they have turned out. I know they aren't perfect but I am still very new to Nail Artistry (is that a word?!). I shall carry on trying out different ideas and techniques and see what I can come up with!

Have any of you been trying out any nail art? Can you suggest any designs that I should try next? I currently have dotting tools, sponges and nail art brushes. I was also thinking of trying the cuticle tattoos that I have been seeing a lot of people talking about...