Hello There!!! And welcome to my first tutorial!
Water marble is one of the hardest things to get the hang of in the nail world. I still have some trouble sometimes but I do it alot. It takes LOTS and LOTS of practice! Once you get the hang of it though, its the easiest thing ever to do. Here I will be showing you my way of doing it and the few tricks Ive learned to get the goal accomplished. :]
Things you will need::
A shallow bowl or a Styrofoam cup. (I know I spelled that wrong!!)
BOTTLED water at room temperature. Faucet water will NOT work!
Any kind of tape. I use masking tape most of the time.
A base color. Usually white. Ive used black before too.
A couple different colors of nail polish.
Toothpicks
Paper towels
An old bath towel
And of course, base and top coat.
(If you dont like using tape, you could also use petroleum jelly if you dont mind the mess.)
First thing to do is get everything set up. Make sure your water is at room temp and it comes out of a bottle. Alot of people dont think this step is that important but it is!! I think it has something to do with the chemicals that faucet water has. Bottled water is filtered therefore, no chemicals for the polish to interact with! Apply a coat of your favorite base coat and let it dry, once that is dry apply your base color. One coat will be enough, it will get covered anyway, so the coverage isnt really that important. Once your done with all that, pour your water in the cup or bowl, whichever you prefer, basically to the top but you have to let some room to put your finger in without spilling water everywhere.
This is my base color. Pure Ice Super Star.
And the skin around my nail covered.
Taping my nails isnt always something I do. Its really up to you but a little scrubbing after your all done takes up all the excess polish without ruining your marble.
Now comes the fun part!
Start dropping polish in the water. Do one color at a time and if you are using a lighter color and two darker colors drop the lighter color between the two darker colors. For example, the colors I chose for this marble are red, pink, and white. Since I used white, I dropped a dot of white polish after the pink and one dot after the red. When you drop dots of polish into the water it should spread out and once your done dropping all your dots Your polish in the water should look like a target....
Like sooo.......
Now, I have found that some brands of nail polish dont work as well for water marbling as others do. The brand that works very well for me is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Polish. Your best bet is to get cheap polish and maybe set it aside for water marbling, if your planning on doing it alot, because you will waste alot of polish doing this.
Now take your tooth pick and start dragging it through the polish. Its up to you where you start. You can start from the sides and go in through the middle. (like I did) Or you could start from the middle and go outwards. You could even do swirls starting from the middle and making a swirl. The possibilities are truly endless, thats why I love doing water marble. No nail will be the same, they will all be unique.
With your tape covered finger, find a design in the polish that you like and dip your nail into the polish, on top of the design you want on your nail. Leave it in the water for a few seconds and clean the excess polish out using a tooth pick. You will need to clean the tooth pick after each swipe, and cleaning out the excess.
Remove your finger from the water. I always blow on my finger to take out the air bubbles. Now remove your tape and clean up begins!
My finger after taking the tape off. Using tape makes cleaning up easier then anything else. There wont be too much to clean up. The reason why I dont always use tape is because its very uncomfortable to me. It also makes working with a tooth pick harder. (In my opinion, of course.) :]
Using nail polish remover and a qtip, clean up around your cuticles. I got these qtips at Walmart. They are called Swispers Nail Polish Clean Up or something around there... Lol These qtips work GREAT for nail polish clean up because they are shaped perfectly!
My cleaned up nail!
Now just add top coat and your done! You could also add some glitter if you would like, or a stamp or two. Just to jazz them up even more!
I really really hope this tutorial helps all of you interested in learning to do water marbling. This is my first tutorial, like Ive mentioned, so I hope I didnt leave anything out! If you try this and my tutorial helped you out alot just leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you and see your designs. Thanks so MUCH for reading and GOOD LUCK!!!
