Day 20: Water Marbled

If I could take one sick day from the 31 Day Challenge, it would be today! The mani you see here is my third attempt at a decent water marble. By the time I finished I was suffocating under the sheer amount of marbling fail. Never again, guys, never again!

In hindsight, my experience with water marbling was not that bad, but at the time all I wanted to do was scrub this off my nails as soon as the pictures were taken. It looks kind of nice, but for the hours, sweat and tears it stole from me I probably won't be doing it again any time soon!

Head over to Rie and Cristina's blogs to see if they had better luck than me with their water marbling!

Base colour: BYS Lilac Bliss

Marble colours: La Femme Grey Cream, Nails Inc Victoria, George Scarlet Kiss

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Neon marbling

Here is my first ever attempt at doing marbled nail design. And when I say that I mean, the first attempt that I am willing to post here.

Holy crap this is difficult to do.  I have watched marbling videos from My Simple Little Pleasures a zillion times, and she makes it look so easy to do.

My main problem was that I wasn't using filtered or bottled water.  Tap water just made the polish all clump up when I tried to run the orange stick through it.  The other thing is that this takes AGES to do.  I'm so slow at doing it.  With the whole taping up your nails thing and the dropping the polish in the water, then dragging through the water, then clean up.. etc etc.  I'm not sure that I'm patient enough to do this very often

I did this marble look using my el cheapo Ulta3 polishes.  I used Lily white as the base then drops of Citrus, Tahiti, Spring Shower, Jelly and Fruit Tingle to create the marble look.

3rd Marbling Attempt = WIN

After my disastrous first attempt and all of your amazing advice, I tried marbling again!

My second attempt went a bit better but was still not up to scratch and I managed to ruin it soon after by bumping and scratching it before it was dry. I think I put too many layers of polish on underneath. This was before clean-up - I didn't even keep it on long enough to get a proper picture.

The marbling isn't too bad but I don't like the colours very much.

My 3rd attempt went much better - I used thinner polishes as you all suggested and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I used 2 coats of BYS Lilac Bliss as a base and wrapped my fingers in sellotape...

For the marbling I used purple, pink and glittery bronze. Then cleaned them up nicely...

 I think I just need to work on getting more of a pattern on my nails rather than a few random swirls.

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Marbling Fail

I have been meaning to try marbling for ages and was reminded by Marina a few days ago. My first attempt didn't go very well. I ended up with lumps and bumps everywhere and more of a clumping than marbling effect. I think it's because I dunked my fingers in, then pulled them back out without remving the excess which then also stuck to my nail.

I used:

L'Oreal LacquiResist - Bebe Blue

and two old Collection 2000 polishes in a red and pink colour.

then a top coat of NYC

Before clean-up:

After clean-up:

As you can see, there's much room for improvement so any advice is welcomed!