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Step 1
Choose nail polish based on color. If you are going to do nail art using nail polish, visit your local beauty supply store or drugstore for the best selection. Quality of polish isn't crucial because you'll be using many different colors and sealing it onto a base color, so the likelihood of it flaking will be based more on the quality of your clear coat and base color.
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Step 2
Make sure to have the primary colors of red, yellow and blue as well as black and white in your selection of nail polish colors. Having these colors will allow you to mix custom colors to make specialized designs.
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Step 3
Branch out into different types of acrylics. Any craft-store acrylic will work just fine for most nail art and can give you the broadest range of colors, which is especially helpful if you don't want to mix your own colors. These containers will be larger than your standard bottle of nail polish so you can mix colors in larger batches and even save them for later use.
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Step 4
Pick out paints that offer different effects. Metallic paints can give your nail art interesting accents, whereas opaque paints are great for creating colorful images. For any difficult-to-mix colors, like neon pink or pearlescent white, buy the exact shade of paint instead of buying multiple paint colors to mix together.
