I was contacted by Rockabilly Luau asking if I could come up with some Luau themed nails they could show the ladies attending the event as inspiration. I was so excited I decided to dedicate an entire week (or more) to it!

Most of the manicures you will see for this theme will include tutorials, I imagine a lot of people viewing these won't be familiar with some terms and techniques, so I am going to try and break it down as best as I can for everyone, and not just my regular readers.
To see all of the manicures in this theme - click here!

So let's get started on these Sunrise Palms nails!

Here is what you will be achieving:



Start off with your lightest color for your base. Here I did 2 coats of a shimmery yellow. I chose a shimmer so that when I sponged over it with the other polishes some of that shimmer would show through, but not in an obvious way. Layering does lots of cool things like that! This base doesn't need to be opaque but it needs to be close. Let dry.

Get a makeup wedge/sponge and cut it so its about the length of your nail or slightly longer.
Here are our shades for this, red, orange and yellow (lighter yellow than I used for the base but you can absolutely use the same yellow)

Paint a stripe of each color directly on your sponge.

At this point I will refer you to THIS tutorial I did showing you how to do a gradient and how to "bounce" the sponge so that all of the colors blend together appropriately.

Add your top coat...

Now let's get to the palm trees. If you feel like freehanding these, by all means, it might be faster than stamping them. But since I couldn't do both hands freehand, I chose to stamp so they matched. I used Bundle Monster Plate 315 with Konad Special Polish in Black.

Take a nail pen or striping brush in black polish and draw some little birds up in the air.

Once your black bits are all dry, go ahead and top coat that sucker because you are done!
Well, you are done after you clean up your cuticles! Always clean them up!