Ah, yellow. I love yellow, but it very definitely does not love me back. My ancestry is first-generation Portuguese (which in a perfect world would give me lovely olive-toned skin), and I-don’t-know-when-they-came-here Russian Ashkenazi, so the combination leaves me with cool-toned light skin that burns easily but then tans well. Or it would, if the weather would cooperate, but it’s been raining for four days. But what it really means is that while I love buttery pastel yellows and covet them in nail polish, they look pretty terrible on me. Sadface forever.

With practice, I can probably get the gradient to stop looking so rough, but I really don’t like doing gradients.

I originally did sunflowers for this week, but thanks to the aforementioned rain, my photography on those was awful, even though I sort of liked how the manicure itself came out. So this morning, I decided to strike back at the rain by doing a sunny yellow gradient, and maybe make up for the fact that I totally skipped week 04: gradient.

When bad photos happen to decent manicures.
Base: essie Where’s My Chauffeur?
Petals: Squarehue Yellow Submarine / Zoya Arizona
Centers: Zoya Angelina / China Glaze Angel Wings

I used a base of China Glaze Dandy-Lyin’ Around (2013 Avant Garden), and sponged on Revlon Sunshine Sparkle, SquareHue Yellow Submarine (2013 Bloom), and Zoya Arizona, which I just got and want to use in everything, all the time. I love it.

Gradients are some seriously hard work cleanup-wise and I don’t really like how they look on me (although other people do them flawlessly and gorgeously), but these colors were light enough and similar enough to each other that it seems to have worked. Eh.

I got the egg timer at Home Goods — isn’t he adorbs?

I took this off after photographing and repolished in my new Julep Alice, a shimmery lilac. Love it.

This was straight out impossible to photograph accurately. It’s more lilac, less blue, in real life.

Next week – floral! Don’t forget to check out Becca’s yellow mani at Fishay Fishay!