Holographic Space nails tutorial

I'm bringing today a tutorial about getting a bit more of space. I had a bit of a creative slump, because this week has been quite hot in my area, but didn't want to start with summer ideas so early for me. I don't enjoy summer, as I live in quite a hot climate, and summer doesn't last 2 to 3 months, but more akin to almost 5, well into spooky season. Of course, I can understand than people in other climates can feel the same with winter if they live more in the north than me, but this is my blog and I complain about summer if I want. So I was blanking on ideas for now and I ended up going to space:

What this relies on is on a cosmetic sponge. We can use them to do something else than gradients, and honestly I don't use mine enough. Sponges are great to create an asymmetrical lay down of colour that can recreate many textures visually, while being flat on the nail. Today I used it in two places: the nebula on the space and on the planet to give it some colour interest. The holographic part comes from my polish selection, as they are all linear holos:

 

Let's name them:

• Holo Taco's Electrostatic
• Holo Taco's Featured Guest
• Holo Taco's Green Taffy
• Holo Taco's Full Charge
• Holo Taco's Mint Mojito

I also used that specific cosmetic sponge. I bought a pack of them several years ago and it's weird to use, as it's a bit too flat to have a good grip for regular full nail gradients, so that's why I use them for this narrower uses or for specific purposes like this one, but you can use your regular triangle shaped ones, this is a great way to get the most of a small clean piece that you can't comfortably hold for a full gradient.

I also must tell you again: my Green Taffy is not as it should be: it's more jelly because of overthinning and thinning several times. You can see the fill line, it's basically in its last legs. Don't worry, I have a back up. But I would love to use up the entirety of the bottle, as I did with my bottle of Mint Money. I would also do that with Full Charge but I missed on the chance of getting a second bottle and I cry every day for that. Cristine, please, I know you won't rerelease that shade, but DM me, I'll give you my address, send me a bottle of yours or something, please, I implore you.

Anyways! Enough of me crying over greens, let's go to space!

This is one coat of Electrostatic, and I felt it was already opaque. In a real manicure, I would have used two coats, not for opacity but for holographic payoff, but for demonstration purposes, I skipped out on it. The actual tutorial comes here. I used tweezers to rip of a piece of that sponge. You want to rip it, not cut it, as you will rely on the asymmetry on the rip. Cutting with scissors would leave a flat surface that won't give you the same result. Specially in such a dense cosmetic sponge like that.

 

You can see the contrast of the front, which is flat, with the side, having those ridges. You will dab your nail polish of choice on a section of those ridges, and then dab onto your nail in the desired areas. I did that with Featured Guest as I wanted the milkier white to give me a nebulous look. You can do several coats, to build it up to a more desired result. As a general refresher: using a sponge will reduce the opacity of your polish, so if you use a generally less opaque formula, you will need more coats. Holo Taco's linear holos are quite opaque, with ironically the exception of Featured Guest, so I needed a couple of coats, but it was desired in this particular instance, as I got more variation. Crèmes would be more drastic, so if you want something way more obvious, I'd recommend that.

I also painted green in a circular shape in the corner of my nail. This is where my overthinned Green Taffy comes into play, as my planet looks way darker than intended due to that. I tell you this because I forgot to control the picture after the sponging here and that pic is blurry and can't be used. I'm sorry for the subpar tutorial:

 

A flat planet looks boring, so let's play with the same technique to give it variation. I applied Full Charge to another section of that sponge and did the same technique, just cointaining it on the surface or the planet. I also layered another lighter coat of Green Taffy with the same technique. You can add many colours to this, it's a matter of contrast, at the end of the day:

For visibility purposes, I added an outline of Mint Mojito and another mint planet in the background:

 

The second planet ended up a bit bulky, as you can see, so I left this rest for around 20 minutes before applying my top coat. It ended up being encased perfectly! Holo wants top coat to shine properly, and my light is definitely not the ideal for it, as ir more in the diffuse side, but my set up is very much not professional. Trust me, in real life it looks good:

 

As with gradients, places that already have polish change structurally as this product dries, so you cannot reuse the exact same section, but I didn't rip off new places of sponge to get the gradients in the planet. How so? I just used other clean sections:

 

Do ignore the green on the back, it was basically me dropping the sponge in a bad place, oops. But you can see that I used different places of the sponge to apply different colours and that way I have a sponge without just one corner, not three. I must report that these pieces must be disposed like rubber. You can't get it out in a significant way.

I hope you enjoyed this technique, next week we're going to play with something a bit more complex, if plans go through! Do tell me which other ways and what colours would you use for this technique, and see you next week!