Once I was finished swatching the 6 shades of the Kokie Professional Nail Polish* that they sent over for me to share with you guys, I really wanted to put together some nail art using a few of them, and I had a few ideas that I rolled around before landing on this one that just stuck in my head. Though I've seen people do this particular sponging technique before, I'm pretty sure that I had never tried it myself - and now I find that I have been remiss because I love it so much!

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So the three shades I chose for this mani are London Fog*, Playing Games*, and Inked* because I felt like they would blend really well and create a really pretty, somewhat muted look in the end - and I was right. To start, I applied a coat of London Fog to all of my nails and let it dry completely. After applying a latex cuticle barrier - very important step when you're doing a sponged on mani - I went in with my sponging.

Basically, I just applied globs of the three polishes in a willy nilly pattern over the flat of the sponge. I was carerful not to apply too much of the blue since it's both quite dark and quite pigmented and it could easily take over the whole nail. When sponging, I tried not to move the sponge around too much so that the colours didn't gett muddy. You want a smooth blend, but also fairly distinct colours as well. It took three layers of sponging for me to be happy with the opacity and blend and then I peeled the latex and used a clean up brush dipped in acetone to get crisp, clean edges. 

For the stamping, I really, really wanted to use this sort of grungey stamping image for a textile sort of design. I love a mani that has that feel of different textiles and I really felt like this base would go to that place if I added this type of stamping to it. I also wanted to keep it fairly muted so that it didn't stand too starkly against the base texture, so I chose a sort of taupey stamping polish that was similar to London Fog, but a leaned a slight bit more on the grey side of taupe. 

Once I had applied the stamping image to all of my nails, I went in with a water based top coat to seal it in and then finished with a matte top coat to take down the shine and really drive home that textile vibe. And voila!

I absolutely love the way this mani turned out - it's basically exactly what I pictured in my head - and I'm definitely curious to try this sponging technique with different colour combinations and stamping images for all kinds of different vibes.

If you're interested in trying out the Kokie polishes, they're available from Sally Beauty and retail for $7.19CAD!

Thanks for reading!