Water Marbling using BYS Reign Supreme and Matte Black

My second water marble, woo hoo! This attempt turned out so much better than the first, and I did it for my good friend Alicia. She wanted it matched to her Halloween costume, a purple and black witch costume. We both agreed that these nails were perfect:

 

This is her right hand. I really, really like the white. That’s the great thing about doing a white base nail colour, it goes with everything! My favourite is actually the little finger. It’s black and then has a wavy line of purple and then white. It looks awesome!

 

This is her left hand. Alicia’s favourite was her ring finger and mine was her middle. Look at that cool white line through the purple on the middle finger!!!

 

I used two coats of Nailene French White for the base. It’s a great white to use as a base because it goes on smoothly and is opaque in two coats. Then we used lanolin to protect her fingers and used BYS Matte Black and BYS Reign Supreme for the marbling. Love it!

 

What do you think?
Em

Water Marble nails using Ulta3 Spring Collection

Beware: Messy nails ahead.
I tried water marbling for the first time last weekend. While I have a lot of improvements to make, I am actually weirdly proud of what I did and can’t wait to try again.

I used some colours from the Ulta3 Spring Collection for this marble pattern:

I used Blue Marlin, Tahitian Lime, Tangelo and Frangipani.
I used room temperature tap water in a plastic cup and toothpicks to swirl the polish into patterns. I used scotch tape to tape around my nails to protect them.

Here is my left hand:

You can really tell this was the first hand I did. Note the thumb: this is a result of sticking the sticky tape too close to the nail and when I ripped it off, I wrinkled half the polish. I also felt like part of the design wasn’t dark enough, so I dipped it again. That’s what that ugly murky colour is. Note to self: Never double dip!
The pointer finger was poor placement on my part. It made me realise I needed to make better designs.
My middle finger got smudged while I pulled the tape off. Note to self: Pull the tape AWAY from your nail, not towards! And it’s much easier to cut the tape off rather than rip.
I love the design on my little fingernail. This was the kind of thing I wanted to achieve on all my fingers!

And here’s my right hand:

Love the thumb, although the blue is a little washed out. I’ll need to make sure I use more highly pigmented colours next time.
My pointer finger, again, was poor placement and not enough colours. My middle finger wasn’t great either.
The ding in my ring finger was because I didn’t let my white base coat dry enough and I smudged it while marbling my other hand. I had to paint over it and it dried funny Love the design, though!
And my little finger also got a ding in it because I was too sloppy pulling the tape off.

I learnt a few things while water marbling which should help so much in my next attempt:

• Make sure you let your base coat dry properly.
• Make sure you get your tape close enough to your cuticles/edges of your nail but not ON the nail
• Cut the tape off carefully to avoid smudging
• Use highly pigmented colours or it could look washed out

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt at water marbling. I promise the next attempts will be better!

Em