Adventures in Water Marbling

Disclaimer: I am not a nail artist, what follows here is my first attempt at nail marbling. It is time consuming, messy and a heck of a lot of fun.  I am a sloppy hand, I make no apologies.

For those who are unfamiliar, water marbling is pretty much the same concept as easter egg dying.  You place drops of nail polish into a cup of water, alternating colors as you go.  You then quickly swirl the colors around and then dip you nail into the polish.  Voila.



The colors I used were China Glaze Swing Baby and Sinful Colors in Show Me The Way and Crystalline. I applied these over a white base.

Here is the marbling on my left hand.  I am pretty happy.  A little more of the white base showed then I wanted, but I blame that on how quickly the polish was drying in my water.  I need to play around more.  I did not get the density of color I desired, but it was still fun.

I really liked how the pinky turned out.  It has a polish booger in it, but I think it almost looks like a rhinestone, so I am cool with it.

Ok, right hand.  A few things went sideways here.  First, I am right handed so it is really hard to work without your dominant hand.  It is also really hard to tape up your hand while your polish is still demi wet on hand # 1.  It's even harder to work quickly and precisely after drinking 1/2 a bottle of Moscato and watching Breaking Dawn (admit it, you don't just watch it for the awesome music, that's like saying you read Playboy for the articles)

All in all, this was a lot of fun.  I am rubbish at clean up, so this will look better tomorrow.  I wait until after I take a warm shower then I gently remove excess polish with a soft towel. Compared to my normal manicure method, which essentially is paint my finger from nail to knuckle, this left relatively little to clean up.  Tape up those fingers!  I highly recommend you put down some paper or an old towel as this gets messy fast.  Seriously, it looked like a clown threw up in my kitchen. 

I think with time and practice (and 1/3 less alcohol) this will be easier to accomplish.  Here is the tutorial I used while preparing for this excursion.  Chloe's Nails