Why use Carrara marble as your Instagram backdrop of choice when you can use yourself, instead? Body marbling — a way to paint your skin — has emerged as the accessory du jour, especially among the festival crowd. That's right, dip-dying your limbs with washes of swirly, skin-friendly paints may be the final nail in the flower crown's coffin: The trend has popped up at the biggest music fests of the summer, like Lollapalooza, AfroPunk, and this weekend’s Made in America Festival.
The process of going from bare to marble-ized, developed by Michigan-based company Black Light Visuals, takes just 60 seconds. Here’s how it works: Prime your skin by dipping it into a salt solution (this helps the acrylic paint adhere), then pick the colors you’d like to wear. Add the dye shades to a tub of liquid and create psychedelic patterns on the surface by twirling the solution with a stick. Once the hydro-dye is ready, dip your skin (say, your whole forearm), then hold it under a dryer to lock in the pattern.
Some forearms we've seen look like Bengal tigers, others like lava lamps — and all the designs take on new life under a blacklight. Will body marbling really take off? TBD. But for now, we can’t think of a faster — or more Insta-ready — way to get inked.
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