Gilded Marble Mani

Hey everyone! After a long hiatus I am finally starting off the New Year with a fresh and trendy manicure. I have been wanting to do stone/agate/marble nails for FOREVER now! The time has finally arrived! In this mani I use two techniques: one that just involves using a stamping plate with stone/agate designs, and another that I also used in my geode mani tutorial.

For this manicure, I started by applying my favourite base coat, Orly Bonder, to all of my nails.
To give my nails a blank canvas I painted them all white (China Glaze White on White).
To make clean up easier after the next few steps I applied a liquid latex to my cuticles (Edge Perfection Easy Peel Polish Barrier).
For all of my nails except my ring finger I then sponged on different shades of grey, white and black (China Glaze White on White, Cirque Colors Shiny, KL Polish Cancer, China Glaze Liquid Leather) to give an irregular stone background, using a cosmetic sponge wedge.
After this I added gold (Maniology It’s Lit stamping polish) and black (Maniology Straight Up Black stamping polish) veining to the marbled nails using the Maniology Chic Peek: Heart of Stone Stamping plate. My favourite stamper is the What’s Up Nails Jumbo Clear Jelly Stamper.
For my ring finger I used the same technique as in my geode mani. To get the circular ringed look, I used the same four different shades of white, grey and black, dropping each polish on top of each other, one at a time, in a puddle on a rigid plastic bag.
Once I felt my nail polish puddle had enough rings, I dipped my XL Clear Jelly Stamper from What’s Up nails into the puddle. This transferred the design onto the stamper, and depending on how I dipped in the stamper, it skewed the design differently so that I got a unique pattern each time. Before transferring onto the nail, I let the design dry. If you don’t do this, there’s a chance it could slide around on the nail and mess up the design you worked so hard for!
Before transferring onto the nail, I applied a sticky base coat to make transfer easier (Maniology Sticky Base Coat). I then transferred the design directly from the stamper on to the nail, and cleaned up the excess
I finished off the mani by applying the Maniology No Smudge Nail Polish Top Coat (Use code SUPERNOVA10 to save 10% off Maniology purchases (affiliate)), followed by my regular glossy top coat (Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat).