Hey Guys!

I don't know about you but I adore natural looking patterns and this stone effect is one of my favourites and one of the easiest to create. I'm actually not sure what this technique is actually called but I am going to call it a Smoosh Mani because that's really what you do and I like the sound of it :)

Truth be told I wanted a simple but stunning mani and I had a few colours in mind that I wanted to include and so smooshing them together was the obvious solution. 

INGREDIENTS. 

Nails Inc London Court 
Butter London Chat Up 
MoYou London Ginger Rust 
CND Vinylux Weekly Top Coat 

EQUIPMENT. 

Plastic wallet or equivalent 

RECIPE.  20 mins (excluding drying time)

1- Depending on time constraints and how much pattern you want on the nail you can either paint a base colour to start as usual or skip right into the fun part. Because I always get over excited blobbing polish I know there will be enough to cover the nail without a base colour so I skip right ahead.

That and I am always running late and lack in patience...

2 - So here's the fun part. Take your nail polish brush and drop blobs of the different colours of polish onto your nail in different spots. Don't worry about being neat or about colours running into each other, we will be smooshing these together in a moment anyway!

You can spread the colours out so that they are all different the whole way through the nail or you can concentrate one colour in a particular area if you like, it's really up to you and the effect you want to create. 

3 - Straight away while the polish is still wet and runny take you plastic wallet and smoosh it on top of the blobs. You wont need to mix it around, just placing the plastic onto the wet polish and pressing down will smudge the blobs together creating the effect. 

4 - Then using the same technique, position the design on the nail where you want it and press down holding it straight. There is really no right way to do this, sometimes you will love the effect and sometimes you will do the exact same thing and hate it and have to take it of and start that nail again.

This is another reason I don't bother with a base colour, to avoid having to re-paint a base colour each time I wanted to re-smoosh a nail. 

5 - When you are happy with the effect, apply the top coat and seal the edges.

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with top coat as I change my nails so often but like to use top coat with these effects as I really think it brings out the detail especially the metallic polishes. 

And that's it folks...super simple, super fun and super cute.  

PROS.

As always this mani is quick and easy but has a big impact and looks waaaaaaaaay more complicated than it is.  I also quite like the unpredictability of the effect, you never quite know how it's going to turn out and you can have a lot of fun experimenting with different blob patterns.

Another good thing with this is that is it pretty much impossible to mess up. I have no problem admitting there is no real skill needed to create this mani and yet the end result looks so sleek and complex. 

CONS. 

It is pretty messy. I am a messy person but both my nails my hands and some of my table was covered in polish smoosh. This can add time in the form of clean up which is something to bear in mind if like me you often paint and go (so your nails dry on the way to your event/work/etc).

As much as I love the unpredictability I also hate it, sometimes you have a very specific vision in your mind on how you want something to look and it is very difficult to get that with this technique, especially if you don't have all day to keep redoing your nails!