No secret I love matchy-match, and when I have a special occasion, I will do my best to match my nails to the very important outfit – this time, was the super pretty Essie dress from Chi Chi London.

Thing is, time wasn’t on my side. I had to travel to Brasil for one of my best friend’s wedding and the nail art would have to be quick and easy, but impactful: enter the tie-dye effect.

I very lucky to learn this technique from the fabulous nail extraordinaire Michelle Humphrey (check her out on Instagram – amazing stuff) and although mine are never going to be as good as hers, I am very happy with the results.

I painted a white base using GOSH’s new Snow White nail polish. Then using damp eyeshadow sponges, I dabbed Kiko 385, a lovely and versatile royal blue, Nails Inc Oxford, a pretty pastel blue, a Models Own black and a touch of Orly in Shine, a silver chrome.

To finish it off, I added the gorgeous Orly Prisma Gloss Silver, which gives a fantastic holographic pixie dust effect, but is also very handy at masking imperfections!

As usual, Seche Vite topcoat went to top to seal all the goodness.

The inpiration – Chi Chi London Essie dress, Pigalle 100 Christian Louboutin shoes and Lulu Guinness Eye clutch. Lipstick is MAC Russian Red

I must admit I wasn’t very keen on the mani when I first did it. It wasn’t quite what I had envisaged – it ended up being more artist-gone-mad abstract blotches than tie-dye, to be honest. Black was very watery and turned a dirty grey (in fact this Models Own polish is awful); the distribution and white spaces were not quite to my liking.

It just felt a bit messy, and you know how I feel about messy. NO.

But as the days went by and some compliments came in, it really grew on me – a lot. And it did match the outfit rather well!

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