Marble/ Stone Effect Nails

Hi nail people! I'm on holiday this week so feeling super relaxed and finally finding a bit of time to catch up on some blogging! This was one of my more 'grown-up' looks and took a little time to grow on me, but I was mostly pleased with the end result. I've seen a number of techniques on creating  marble like nails and the free hand options appealed the most (for once!).

I started with a white base and then a layer of top coat to protect the base. I then used a small nail at brush to paint some small lines in random places across each nail. I then dipped the brush in  nail polish remover and used it to blur the lines across the nail. Once done I used the same dark grey I used for the initial lines to do a few more over the top, using some images online as a guide.

My intention was to use stencils or tape for the next bit but that would have taken a long time to allow everything to dry. I painted on some gold at the bottom of each nail and then applied another top coat, as I wanted to get a smooth and slightly sticky finish for the next step. When the top coat was nearly dry I used gold chrome powder over the gold polish. I then used a water based to coat to finish the gold, and a matte top coat for the rest.

Strangely the gold looked mirror chrome to start with, but didn't last even long enough for my pictures (taken the next morning for better light).It did stay super shiny though. I wonder if it would have worked better over black. Overall I am quite pleased with this design but think it could get better with practise. I'd like to try it with some other colours, particularly turquoise.
Colours used: Alpine Snow - OPI, Dragster - Barry M, Gold Digger - Barry M, Gold Chrome Powder - eBay