Water Marble Nails, I think I have got it!

Tried water marble nails ages ago, but they didn't work out so I just carried on with freehand art instead.
Recently a friend encouraged me to try again (thank you Tracy!) so I decided I would. The first ones were bad so I removed them straight away without letting anyone see them. But I still wanted to try again so I panted my nails and used silver glitters to water marble a design on top. Those I kinda liked so I photographed them and wore them to work all weekend.

Got really positive feedback on them from my colleagues so I decided I would give full on proper water marbling a go again.
This is my journey...

My starting point was a base coat of Sally Hansen continuous treatment base & top coat, followed by one coat of my base colour Barry M 310 Mushroom. Now I am lazy and couldn't be bothered taping up my fingers so I just got to picking the colours for the marbling.

I picked Cutex 'Strong Nail' nail enamel in eggplant, huckleberry & sweet pea.

I need to stress how important it is for the water you use to be truly room temp. I think this has been my problem with getting to grips with marbling as I have used both cold and hot water without success so I think water temp must be a high priority in order to get marbling to work. I had the water sat in the chosen bowl for a good couple of hours to make sure it was the right temp this time.

As you can see this ruins bowls so make sure it's one you don't mind getting dirty for life.

Next point is make sure you open all the pots so you can drop the polish colours on the water quickly as you have a short amount of time to get this done, pattern made and on the nail before it starts to dry.

now drip one colour at a time into the centre of the bowl and watch it spread then add the next drip, and so on. I used 3 colours and dripped each one twice as shown below.

now the next step is to make your design. I used a kebab stick, you can use anything really, cocktail stick, orange stick, pin, etc,etc.

Then you submerge your nail into the desired part of the pattern and keep it there whilst gently blowing on the paint on the surface of the water to dry it. Then twirl your stick in the now dried paint to separate it from your finger. Once the surface of the water is clear of polish remove your nail and leave to dry, repeat until all your nails are marbled. Your should end up with something similar to the photos below.

Messy but now marbled, any excess can be removed easily with a cotton bud soaked in nail polish remover, take care around the edges of the nails or you may just remove the pattern from your nail too.

Once cleaned up here is the finished product...

This takes time and a good bit of polish, but the results are well worth the effort and with practise they only get better!

Hope this helps.