After my semi-fail of a pastel neon watermarble, I couldn’t face trying to achieve anything half-decent on my right hand.  I had to wear this for a couple of days, so I used the same polishes plus some holo top coat to create this blurry, Pastel Rainbow effect.

Excuse the jump back to long nails! As you’ll have seen from my Holographic Waterfall design, I’ve filed them down short, but I’m really behind in posting.  I’m trying to catch up!

I already had a white base from the watermarble plans, so I made the most of it by dabbing and swiping seven different colours.  They are from the Color Club Poptastic collection and they blend really well, so it took me no effort at all to create this effect.

Polishes and tools

Your favourite base coat and top coat
Cirque Carpe Diem
Color Club Disco’s Not Dead, Hot-Hot-Hot Pants, Feathered Hair Out To There, Diggin’ The Dancing Queen, Meet Me At The Rink, Til The Record Stops and Under The Blacklight
ILNP My Private Rainbow X

There was no need for liquid latex to keep things clean, and I only needed to do minimal clean-up.  If you have some colours that are similar in finish and tone, then this would be really easy to achieve at home with no skill whatsoever.

After the white base, i just worked through all seven polishes, making sure there wasn’t too much loaded on the brush.  I dabbed and painted in different spots on each nail.

The colours overlapped and blended easily, so I had no need to use a sponge to make this gradient effect.  That would have taken much longer – I found this really quick!

Pastel Rainbow

Once the colours were all on, I added a coat of my favourite holo top coat and finished it off with Seche Vite.

The colours really come alive in sunlight, and you definitely see their neon tendencies when outside.  Certainly not your average pastel polishes.

This design worked great alongside my slightly ropey watermarble. I hate it when my hands don’t match, but this worked really well.  Are you won over by this watercolour effect, or do you long for those eye-searing true neons?