My nieces and I did this together on Sunday afternoon. They were thrilled with the results; I'm little less excited. It took a long time to tape up our nails, but that step is absolutely vital unless you want to spend an hour cleaning up your fingers later.
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| My 4-year-old niece's nails. She picked different colors for each nail. Her manicure took the longest. |
You can find some great youtube tutorials for this technique. Basically, you take a cup with room temperature water, drop small drops of nail polish on the surface, use a toothpick to swirl/marble them together before the polish dries, then dip your finger in the water to transfer the pattern to your nail. It can get a pretty messy, and it takes a fair amount of practice to get good at creating patterns. But it creates a unique look. I thought my nails looked awful, but I got a lot of compliments on them. We used a white base coat to help the patterns show up better. I'd like to try again with different colored base coats.
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| My 13-year-old niece's nails. I think hers turned out the best. |
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| Mine. I really like both pinkies, but other than that I wasn't too impressed. |
Total Cost: Around $4, including base and top coats, polishes for swirling, tape, and toothpicks, and a disposable plastic cup for mixing.
