How to Do a Mixed Metal Manicure
By Anne Counter
, last updated January 24, 2012
There was once a time when people actually believed that wearing gold and silver together was bad luck. Even if you aren't superstitious, you may have always believed that you can only wear one metal or the other, thanks to your skin tone. These days, however, you can forget what you've learned about mixing metallics. Today's fashionistas all consider metallics neutrals; this means that you can wear them with anything, even together. In fact, mixed metal manicures are one of the hottest trends for spring. The secret to making your mixed metal manicure look cool is to pick metallics that look good together.
Source:eHow
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Mixed Metals the Hard Way
Want to copy the mixed metal manicure you've been seeing on your favorite celebs? It's not as complicated as it looks, but you're going to need to pick up a few supplies. To begin with, give your nails two coats of a gun metal polish like CND Enamel in Hyde in the Dark. This will give your nails a dark silver tone. Allow this polish to dry, then give your nails a coat of nail adhesive. Try Kami's Nail Foil Adhesive. This adhesive goes on white, but dries clear and matte. Allow the adhesive to dry.
Finally, apply a strip of gold foil, shiny side down, over your dry nails. Tap the back of the foil lightly three times to deposit the pigment, then carefully lift the foil away. Repeat this process with silver foil. You'll have to do each nail individually for best results. You should end up with a manicure that is matte, dark grey metallic in the background with shiny slivers and specks of gold and silver on top.
Mixed Metals the Easy Way
Did you like the way the mixed metal manicures at Alexander McQueen looked? Believe it or not, this style is actually even easier to do than the first type of manicure. To get the Alexander McQueen mixed metal look, start by applying a soft, pale gold polish like Avon's Pale Gold. Apply two coats, so that your base is opaque. Next, apply a single coat of iridescent, silver glitter polish like Deborah Lippmann's Today Was a Fairy Tale. You have to buy the kind with the big pieces of glitter for this to work. Finally, apply a matte top coat like Essie's Matte About You. This will make the polishes matte, but the glitter pieces will still be sparkly. You'll end up with nails that look like they have a gold metal background embedded with shiny bits of silver.
You can change the look of your manicure by choosing different metallic shades. You just need a metallic base and a middle coat with big pieces of glitter. For example, a gun metal base looks great with copper glitter. You can even do a gold-on-gold manicure if you use a pale gold as the base and a darker gold for the glitter coat. You'll have to experiment with lots of different combinations to find out which work best for you.
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