Memorial Day Water Marbling

I wanted to do a nice, patriotic design for Memorial Day, so I decided I would try my hand at water marbling again. I have only done it once before, and not for years. I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat and then painted two coats of Sally Hansen Hard to Get (white) on all of my nails. For the nails that I didn't want to water marble, I used a dotting tool to apply some Dally Hansen Double Duty to stick my red, silver, and blue loose glitter to. I just made diagonal rows of the glitter. I will now try to explain how to water marble, but you can also watch videos on Youtube about how to do it. It is time consuming, but not too difficult: You will need a plastic (preferably disposable) cup of room temperature water. The temperature of the water affects how the polish reacts to the water. You will also need scotch tape and a toothpick. Oh! And at least two different colors of polish. I have heard that the newer and runnier the polish, the better. The polish I used today wasn't super new and thin, but I got it to work. Just don't use super old polish. I used the scotch tape to cover a lot of the tip of my finger so the clean-up process would be a lot easier. I then unscrewed all of my polishes so that I could work fast. Speed is something you will need, but still be careful. I then began holding the brushes around an inch or two above the surface of the water and dripping the polish onto the surface. It should spread out. I only put three drops on--a drop of each color (red, white, and blue.) You can do more, though. (I dripped the next color in the center of the previous spread out color.) I then quickly took my toothpick and made lines and swirls in the polish to make an interesting pattern. I am not too great at this. Then I put the nail that I wanted the marbling on face down in the spot of the pattern that I wanted to be on my nail.

I held it in there for a few seconds and then began gently blowing on the surface of the water to quickly dry the remaining polish. I left my finger in the water and then took the toothpick and swirled it in the dry polish on top of the water to pick it up and remove it from the water. I finally took my water marbled nail out of the water and carefully removed all the tape. I then used a flat nail art brush dipped in acetone to clean up the excess polish on my finger. There was barely any, since I used tape. Oh! Don't try to dry the nail off! It will air dry! I repeated this for four of my nails. (The blue is Sinful Colors Into the Blue and the red is Rimmel Stiletto Red.

I finished off this manicure by applying two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. Something that can go wrong is the polish dripping off your brush and settling in a blob at the bottom of the cup. If this happens, just adjust the distance you are holding the brush above the surface of the water. You may need to drip it higher or lower. Just experiment. I am no expert at this technique and I ended up with five blobs of polish at the bottom of my cup. Also, sometimes the polish does not spread out on the water. It sits in a small circle on top of the water. If this happens, just blow on it so it will dry and then swirl a toothpick around it to wrap it up and remove it. I may have had some of these problems because some of my polish was a little thick. I did get it to work, though. The hardest part for me is dragging in a neat design and placing my finger in the right spot. One of my nails on my right and is super boring because I misplaced my finger. (Haha! That sounds super weird!) I hope I explained this so you guys can understand, at least, some of it!