White marble backgrounds are basically a blogger’s staple at this point. But that’s for a reason, because it’s a gorgeous neutral to use as a backdrop in photos of products. I’ve recreated this pattern before using stamping, and this time I’m taking on hand painted white marble nail art.

Right hand featuring white marble nail art

Hand painted white marble nail art – find out how a bottle of smudge fix can make the perfect nail art tool for this design…

Polishes and tools

Jessica Rejuvenation
Orly Bonder
Cirque Carpe Diem and Page Six
Painted Polish Stamped in Clay, Stamped in Charcoal and Gray Goddess
Londontown kur Instant smudge fix
Enchanted Djinn in a bottle
Seche Vite
Nail art brush
Rainbow Connection clean up brush

I started with one coat of Carpe Diem over my base, and then dry swiped a little light grey Page Six over it. You want to use as light a hand as possible.

Left hand fingers with white marble nail art design

Angle the lines of the design to match across each hand for a coordinated piece of art

Next, I moved on to a slightly darker grey, Stamped in Clay. Using a long, very fine nail art brush, I drew some short-ish wavy lines across my nails. For each hand, keep the lines roughly in the same direction to keep it looking chic.

Creating soft organic lines

If you just leave the lines, they look a bit stark, so I blended them into the base using a smudge fixer polish from kur. It kind of melts the polish together and smooths it out. You don’t lose the colour, but the lines are much softer.

I repeated the process with a darker grey, Stamped in Charcoal, went back in with the lighter grey again, and then finally with a little sparkly grey polish (Gray Goddess) to highlight the lines. After each one I used a little smudge fix to blend.

Close up of left hand ring finger nail with white marble nail art, showing the rainbow flecks of holographic top coat

Close up you can see the rainbow effect, but at a distance it looks like the natural shimmer of marble

After top coat, my inner magpie came out, so I couldn’t resist adding a little holo topcoat from Enchanted.

Hand painted nail art

It’s been a while since I’ve used nail art brushes to create hand painted designs. If your hands are a little shaky or you’re just starting out, organic wavy lines like this are perfect to start out. They don’t need to be perfect at all! Smudges and wobbles are encouraged.

Close up of nail art on three left hand fingers with only the index finger in focus

On my middle finger you can see how I focused the sparkle on the painted veins in the marble design.