Ombre Nail Art Tutorial Featuring Orly Nail Polishes!

In honor of both National Nail Polish Day earlier this month and reader feedback, I thought I would share a tutorial on how I do ombre nail art. In each step below, all of my favorites products to help achieve this look are included.

Getting started:

The supplies you need are minimal: two nail polishes that you like together (you’re going to have the best luck with polishes that have a crème formula), disposable makeup sponges (please, do not use your beauty blender here), and then a base coat, top coat, and liquid latex. You can do this without liquid latex, but it will be very messy. I use this one, but you can find a wide variety of options on Amazon.

To start, lay down a piece of paper you don’t mind getting dirty (like the back of a Sephora receipt, for example), and prep your nails with your favorite base coat. I keep a coat of clear gel polish on top of my acrylic overlay, but before I had acrylics I would use Orly Bonder or OPI Nail Envy as my basecoats of choice (Nail Envy is a treatment for helping your nails to grow strong, but it worked surprisingly well as a base coat!)

Next, I applied two coats of liquid latex around my cuticles. The one I use goes on light pink and turns dark pink when dry, and you definitely want to make sure the latex is fully dry before moving on to the next step.

Applying the polishes:

The next step is to take the flat end of your disposable makeup sponge and apply your polishes to them. I used Orly It’s Brittney, Beach from the Summer 2019 Color Pass and Orly Olive You Kelly from the Fall 2018 Color Pass. I like to leave the tops loose on the polishes at this step because you will be reapplying polish to the sponge frequently.

Next, you start painting! Just like you would a stamp, you press the flat end of the sponge onto your nail, aiming for where the colors meet on the sponge to be in the middle of your nails.

Repeat this step on all nails. Next, give your nails a minute or so to dry and reapply polish to the sponge.

Then apply another layer.

And another. As you are pressing down the sponge, move it slightly up and down to get the blended effect for the two shades.

You repeat this step until you are happy with both the opacity and the blended effect of the polish. Each layer is pretty thin thanks to the way we applied the polish, so it doesn’t get thick even though you’re doing multiple coats. I was happy with how it looked after four coats!

Finishing touches:

Once you’re done, remove the liquid latex (it comes off with ease!).

I then like to use the pointy end of a cotton swab dipped in nail polish remover (my favorite nail polish remover is by OPI- I have literally purchased a gallon of it before)  to clean up any stray polish, and then I finish with a top coat. My preferred topcoat is this one by Seche Vite.

And there you have it! This is how I achieve an ombre nail art look. What do you think? If you give this a try, I would love to know your thoughts on how it went and what shades you used. Are there any other nail art tutorials you guys would like to see in the future? Let me know in the comments below!