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Practice, practice, practice!

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8. Multicolor Nails

There are some amazingly wild color combinations people use and some of them can't be done without alcohol based dyes, gel paint, etc. However there is still a lot you can do with regular old nail polish!

Ombre nails are super interesting. You just need to have a bit of patience and some makeup sponges. (Alternately, you can try the "smoosh" method; will explain, below.)

First, paint your nails with a base color. This makes for a lot less work.

Second, using a barrier is a big help when doing this style of color. It protects your skin from the polish, and thus, the cleanup afterwards. The less you have to clean up, the less likely you are to wreck your new paint job afterwards! ;)

Next, paint a strip of color onto the sponge. Sheer colors don't work too well here. If you're doing a two-color ombre, paint a strip of the second color next to that. Don't overload the sponge with color as it won't go on well. In some cases you're going to be doing several layers, so it won't always happen all at once!

(You can also do a three-color, but practice with two first. With three your strips of color will be a little thinner of course, so that the area of paint is as big as the area you're sponging/painting.)

Now, on to the painting. Pad this over your nail once - or maybe several times, depending on the polish - to sponge it on. Don't over-sponge it. If you don't see much progress at first, don't worry. Just wait a few minutes to let it dry. This wait time is VERY important. 


Repeat as needed. Now the color will start to layer. If you did this too soon before drying, the sponge will actually start removing some of the color from the layer below, and become messy. This can also happen if you put too much paint on the sponge.

Repeat your layers until you're happy!


Remove barrier, clean up, and top coat.. or stamp.  Bam!  You're done.

Tip - If you want to use the sponge for another color wave, you can trim it off with scissors.  Cut in an even, slicing motion so that the sponge stays flat and even.


You don't have to paint in strips, as you'll see in one of the videos below. You can also paint splotchy drops on your sponge to apply to your nails for more of a "galaxy" type design.

A second way to get a multicolored effect is the smoosh method. It’s when you put some dots of colors on a stamper and then “smoosh” it onto your nail. Again, a barrier on your finger here saves a lot of messy cleanup. You can use tape or the liquid latex options. 

A third way to make a Smudgicure is to use a stamping plate! https://youtu.be/jkoV0r9wg3c

Finally, you can manually blend the colors on your nail with a brush. Rubbing alcohol is a solvent for nail polish so try blotting and blending colors together. I haven't tried this yet, and worry that it could be messy for me, yet a viable option all the same. 


I'll link some videos I found helpful, below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwlBobg0djc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXjjGgxeqGg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B242_rJiOg

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