Swirl Pin Marble with Color Club Kismet, Femme Fatale Deepstone, and Lilypad Lacquer Teal Pearl

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The magical powers of Russian nail bloggers are so amazingly perfect that they've become a sorta polish fiend joke, but when Sveta does this gorgeous "drag marble" or someone just makes these look sooooo amazingly easy, I've gotta give it a go.

direct sunlight
Summer is also winding down, so this technique was a great way to try out as many new holos as reasonably possible at once.

flash
The brief version of this technique:

  • basecoat per usual
  • one thin coat of whatever the base for the design will be (here, Color Club's Kismet), and let it dry pretty thoroughly
  • work one nail at a time, putting a thick coat of the base polish on the whole nail, then drops of the accent colors (here, Femme Fatale's Deepstone and Lilypad's Teal Pearl) while it's all still wet
  • use toothpick or dotting tool to first drag through the base color, then continuing to sweep through the accent color drops, with the goal to make leaf or heart or random swirl shapes
shade
Ultimately, I liked the way this turned out, though it was of course nowhere near as amazing as my source inspiration pics.  Some nails turned out way better than others, and smaller or fewer accent dots is definitely the way to go.  I think it helps a whole lot to pick accent colors that are of roughly equivalent thickness/opacity - Teal Pearl was noticeably thinner than Deepstone, and that made TP "float" more on the polish surface rather than sink into Kismet and "blob" evenly.   Still, people other than me thought it was pretty cool, and it did holo like crazy, so win!

~Michelle

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