MANI MONDAY: Swirling Pastel Smoosh Mani

by - March 12, 2018


One of my favorite nail art techniques recently, which I find to be pretty fast and generally pretty easy, is the smooshing technique using a stamper. Basically, it works exactly how it sounds. You apply dots of polish in different colours - I like anywhere between 3 and 5 shades - to a stamper and then transfer to the nails in a sort of smoosh to get a marbled pattern on the nails. As you'll see below, I like to add some sort of pattern over this technique, mostly because I'm extra, but just left as it is this is a really pretty - and fairly easy - way to get an impactful, marbled mani.

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Both of these mani's are some of my favorites that I've done in the past few months and both of them used the smooshing technique using holographic polishes. The one on the left mixed linear and scattered holo while the one on the right (which you may remember from last week's Mani Monday) used all Color Club Halo Hues linear holos and I think the effect ended up being quite different. This time around I wanted to try this technique using créme polishes and I had a few from Julie G that I picked up at a local liquidation place that felt perfect.


For this mani, I started with a base of Julie G Rio De Janeiro and let that dry completely. Next I added a generous coat of cuticle tape around my nails, including over my fingertip, because if you use a little too much polish this can get messy. On my clear stamper, I applied dots of Julie G Santorini, Canary Islands, and Rio De Janeiro and smooshed it onto the nail, bouncing a couple of times to make sure I got good coverage and blend. I used an orange stick and a clean up brush to really get in and tidy up the excess polish. Next, I added a thin coat of NYC Shimmer Blast to add some pink flash that absolutely didn't show up in photos. I let this dry for probably about a half hour before moving on to stamping the pattern, because I wanted to make sure I didn't squish the thick coat of polish. Finally, using the Pueen Fairytale Lover 02 Stamping Plate and Bundle Monster Straight Up Black Stamping Polish, I added the swirl patter to give some depth and interest. 

Honestly, guys, I'm really happy with how this mani looks (even though my top coat shrunk and I am glaring at it) and I can really tell with this colour selection that MY BODY IS READY FOR SPRING! Hope you guys enjoyed it! If you have any links to smoosh mani's that you've done, I'd love it if you'd leave them in the comments because I'd love to check them out!

Thanks for reading!

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