Holiday Splatter Mani with Simple Tutorial--Photo Heavy

Hello Lab Partners,

First, I'd like to wish happy birthday to my hubby, who probably isn't reading this, but in case he is . . . Happy Birthday!

Yesterday, I showed you Zoya Haley. After several days, it was wearing so well and I loved it so much I didn't want to take it off, so I decided to do a holiday splatter mani using Haley as the base color:

If you've never done a splatter mani, it's a fun, easy way to add some interest to your nails. I particularly like doing a splatter after I've been wearing a polish for several days and am ready for a change but not ready to remove the polish, as was the case with Haley. I've broken down the procedure for doing a splatter mani into several easy steps.


Materials:

• An old towel, paper towels or newspapers
• Scotch tape
• Drinking straws (I suggest one for each color you'll use for splattering). Medium sized straws work best--neither the jumbo kind, nor the little stirrer type.
• A paper or plastic plate
• Your regular mani supplies (base coat, remover for clean up, top coat, etc)
• Polish to use as base color
• Polishes for splattering. For this mani, I used two colors: Sinful Colors Envy and Zoya Snowwhite. But you can use more colors. Or you can splatter with only one polish.

1) Cover your working surface with an old towel, paper towels, or newspaper. This is a messy process!

2) Make sure your base color is completely dry before doing the splatter portion of the mani. As I said, I usually splatter a few days after I've put on the base color.

3) Once base color is completely dry, put Scotch tape around the side and bottom edges of your nails on one hand to make the process less messy. You will work one hand at a time. In other words, you will complete the entire splatter process on one hand and allow that hand to dry before splattering onto the nails of the second hand.

Skin around nail edges taped in preparation for a splatter mani

Straw has been dipped in polish, which will be splattered on nails.

4) Dip a straw into the first polish to splatter. You can try pouring a little polish on your paper plate, but I have greater success when I dip the straw straight into the bottle. If you do dip into the bottle, make sure you change to a new straw for each splatter color to prevent mixing your polish colors. If you only have one straw, you can try cleaning it very well, but it's not an easy task.

5) Using a short, strong puff of breath, do a few "test splatters" of polish onto your paper plate before splattering onto your nails, redipping the straw into polish as needed.

6) Once you've splattered all nails of one hand with the first splatter color, move on to the next color, if using one.

It's a messy process . . .

A really messy process!

7) When all splattering is complete on the first hand, remove tape, apply top coat, and allow the splatter polish to dry.

8) Repeat process on other hand.

9) Have fun cleaning up the mess you've made!

Post splatter mani mess

All cleaned up!

I like this one because you can see my hand reflected in an ornament. 

And there you have it!

I hope you've enjoyed this splatter mani edition of The Polish Lab!

Until next time,

Allison