Gray is a really easy color to mix yourself- just black and white! One tip: Add the black drop by drop to the white- don’t try to add white to black or you’ll find you waste a lot of polish! I poured a bit of white polish into my silicone baking cup, then added black bit by bit.
This is 15 parts white and one part black. Both the black and white polish I used are dollar store ones, so you can get a good result with even cheap polish.
You can see this gray leans toward the cool side- that means it contains blue in the base. All black polishes are not created equal- some have a red or purple undertone, but you’ll never know until you add white to it. Fascinating, I know, but I’m a bit of a color nerd, so it is interesting to me, at least. 
I really like the color combination of a darker gray and silver. It’s fresh and modern, but not too edgy for every day wear. Here’s some super-quick random silver dots (China Glaze Sci-Fi) over the gray base.
If anyone’s interested, I could do a dotting tool tutorial. You can make dots, hearts, flowers, etc. with an inexpensive tool, even if you consider yourself to be painting-challenged. Any takers?
Nail school is going well- we’ve covered basic hygiene, anatomy and filing various shapes. We’ll be going onto basic art in the next couple weeks, so that’ll be very interesting. While I can paint pretty well, I am also one of the slower ones in the class since I’m a terrible perfectionist. Yes, I know you can just wipe polish off the cuticle after painting if need be, but it feels like cheating.
Um, also: just a public service announcement: If your nails are GREEN without any polish on, see a doctor pronto. We were asked what we should do if we saw a client with green nails. I wanted to say, “Prepare for a zombie attack and load the shotgun!” but that’s just my weird sense of humor. Some folks did think it was a good idea to cover it with polish, but that’s incorrect. If your nails are green, see a doctor. Please.
I couldn’t help but giggle at what you said. I would never hear people say that they’re learning about nail filing every day, and you sound very serious about it. It sounds like it’s one of the coolest classes ever! I can’t wait to see what the nails will look like.
In school I take an apparel class, but we’re out for the summer. Anyway, we spent one entire class on zippers. I am just laughing thinking about it. But I am dedicated to fashion probably just as much as you are to nails. I hope to get into design school to get a degree and maybe become a costume designer. Out-of-the-ordinary classes are awesome, aren’t they?
Professional classes are tons of fun- lots of stuff you never even considered, like zippers and filing! But without those details, everything falls apart (literally!)
I took a whole class in Japan on how to do gel flowers. That was *all* we did for 18 classroom hours.
Costume designing sounds like tons of fun! I’d like to get into fantasy nails for movies and fashion shoots as well.
Would definitely love a dotting tool tutorial! I currently can’t do anything with mine besides basic dots – the more options, the merrier!
Also, what does it mean if your nails are green? You have me wondering now!
All righty then, a dotting tutorial it is!
If you can do dots, you can do a lot of other shapes with just a little twist.
Green nails = a major fungal infection. Yellow nails can be a result of staining from dark polish, but if they are actually *green,* professional medical help is necessary. (And this is coming from a kind of person who will wait till I cough up a lung before I actually go to the doctor.)