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HOW TO | Marble your nails

WHILE I won’t be feathering my hair any time soon, there is one ’70s beauty trend I’m game to try this spring when, apparently, we’ll all be dressing like Charlie’s Angles. That is the marbled fingernail. Goes well with platforms, roller skates, high-waisted flares and a retro baseball tee sans bra.

Marbled nails might look easy now that the likes of WAH are on the scene, but it’s not a project to be undertaken with little time or patience. The first time you do it, be prepared to spend a couple of hours — at least — toying around with process until you get it to work just right for you.

Factors that you’ll have to take into consideration — and tweak accordingly — when doing this:

Water type: hard or soft water? Figure it out. I found filtered water is best.

Nail polish types: Some brands of polish work better than others. Some won’t work together, some will. Trial and error with your set of polishes helps.

Nail polish colours: Keep color theory in mind and how pigmented your polishes are. Caramel on greige looks pretty smokin’ ’70s, but I don’t like pearlised pastels nor am I a fan of high-contrast colors.

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LUST-HAVE | Scotch Naturals WaterColors

3-FREE is a pretty common catch phrase in the world of nails nowadays. No one wants toluene, formaldehyde or or DBP in their nail polish anymore. Um, fair enough.

We've seen Priti, Sula, Rescue Beauty, Ginger and Liz, Jessica, Zoya, Mavala... In fact, you can probably find more non-toxic polishes than toxic, although many of the biggest offenders are still the biggest names in the beauty.

The latest in non-toxic, natural nailcare is Scotch Naturals, a collection of 13 water-based polishes from an Arizona mom who first created non-toxic Hopscotch Kids nail polish for little girls.

In fact, the brand has such faith in its product that it claims to give you healthier nails the longer you use it (but be sure to use their remover too instead of super-drying acetone).

After reading the ingredient lists of their products, we tend to agree. The WaterColors ingredients are: water, acrylic polymer emulsion, and non toxic colorants. Seriously. THREE INGREDIENTS. The Polish Remover ingredients? water, tall oil fatty acids & alcohols (plant based), nonionic surfactant, organic buffer. 

Natural nail colour does tend to be harder to apply, take longer to dry and be quicker to come off and/or chip, but Scotch Naturals gives some handy tips to keep it looking better longer on this page.

Ceasefire and Hot Toddy are on-trend putty/mushroom/greige/khaki colours. There are some brilliant blues, a fiery red, black, a magenta and a bevy of nudes for the non-adventurous. All in, a well-rounded capsule collection.

Good for your nails taken neat.

Speaking of naturals... stay tuned for a little side project we're working on a very chic gardening e-commerce site... Kale & Cole {for the hip garden}. We can't wait to launch it!