Recent NOTD: Pink Ombre

I was feeling a bit blue when I got back from the weekend I recapped in yesterday's post, so to cheer myself up, I decided to do a bright and happy mani. I could have just grabbed one of the colors I've bought recently from the spring displays, but since I have eleventy hundred polishes in my Helmers, I decided to pull five of them to do an ombre. After flipping through my nail wheels, I decided on warm pink cremes and ended up with these five: Maybelline Express Finish Pink Sombrero, Wet 'n' Wild Craze Tahiti, OPI Feelin' Hot Hot Hot, Sally Hansen Salon Azalea, and Sally Hansen Insta Dri Speedy Sunburst.



As usual when I do ombre manis, I put the lightest color and my thumb and progressed to the darkest on my pinky. The first three shades took three coats, and the last two took two. Since this was a full mani, I used treatment and base coats under the color and top coat over it.



I know this type of mani is not what some folks consider "ombre" (including China Glaze, whose "ombre" kits we saw in my last display post), but I agree with The Swatchaholic's definitions of ombre, gradient, and Skittles, so this mani is ombre to me.



After three or four days, I was ready for a change, so I looked around in the polishes waiting to be swatched and/or put away and found China Glaze Razzle Me Dazzle Me from the Bitz 'n' Pieces collection that's in stores now. It's sort of hard to tell what to expect from this polish just by looking at the bottle—there's a lot of black glitter in there and some warm light pink glitter (which is why I chose it to top my warm pink ombre).



I bought my bottle at Ulta, so it has a silver handle instead of the black ones that showed up at Sally's (and in my recent display post—I wish I knew why China Glaze wasn't consistent with the handle color across a collection). I used one coat of Razzle Me Dazzle Me plus topcoat over my ombre. I wasn't crazy about the long black bar glitters in this; they were hard to get evenly and pleasingly distributed. Because they're such a different shape than the rest of the glitter they really seem to stand out, so my eye kept going to them and wanting to rearrange them even after my nails were dry.





I wasn't too happy with this combination so it didn't last long on my nails. I will probably try this glitter over a different base color at some point to see if that pleases me more.

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