Candy Cane Water Marble Nail Art

Ho ho ho! I love everything candy cane related, so obviously there had to be some kind of candy cane nail art for this holiday season. I think water marble is the perfect technique to achieve those lines and this is my favorite marble look anyway. I was wearing three coats of Essie - Fiji the other day, so I thought I'd keep it simple and just marble over what was already there. I added Essie - Need a Vacation and Fishnet Stockings to the mix and they worked lovely together. I didn't use any top coat this time.

Water Marble feat. Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue

Water marble time! I don't think I've ever tried this color combination before in a water marble and I do quite like it! I used p2 - Passion as my base color with one coat and then combined it with Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue for the marble. They both worked fine, but there were also some air bubbles which you can see on some nails. On top is one coat of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. Hope you like it! :) 

Water Marble Nails feat. OPI Nordic Collection

I always like doing nail art with specifique colors of a collection and I think the water marble technique is perfect for combining different colors in one design. I used my favorite polish from the OPI Nordic collection called My Dogsled Is A Hybrid as my base color for the marble. Then I added Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm? and Viking In A Vinter Vonderland to the mix. If you're unsure about this technique you can check out my Water Marble Basics. 

Purple & Mint Water Marble

Today's design is a water marble which I did last week and although I got a bit confused with what is left and right while doing the marbling, I still kind of liked it in the end. I used a white base to make sure that my colors would look opaque enough and then picked three colors for the marble: OPI - Pamplona Purple, Essie - First Timer and China Glaze - Holly-Day. Actually I just wanted to use mint and purple first, but then the lines weren't clear enough for me, so I had to add a darker color as well. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

My Water Marble Basics

(Piñata) Water Marble

Time for some water marble! This is one of those designs where I saw some bottles standing around on my table and felt like they would look cute combined. At first I wanted to add green to it as well, since I wanted to do something Piñata inspired. But the green didn't work for the water marble technique (check out my water marble basics here!) so I just used these three colors: OPI - Hey Baby, OPI - I Just Can't Cope-acabana and H&M - Car Paint Purple. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

The Lacquer Legion Reinvention: Water Marble

Quite spontaneously I decided to join The Lacquer Legion this month! It's a nail art challenge put together by Sarah from Chalkboard Nails with the help of Rebecca Likes Nails, The Nailasaurus and Work/Play/Polish. This month's subject is reinvention and I decided to "reinvent" an old design of mine. This old design is actually the second design I posted on my blog and I posted it in August 2011. I used almost the same colors again for this water marble. This is obviously not the biggest reinvention, but it was nice to see the difference between my old design and today's marble. The colors used are H&M - Manhunter, H&M - U Must Have This and Catrice - Blue My Mind. I'm looking forward to the next challenge! 

The Water Marble Basics

This post is all about the Water Marble (WM) technique. I will explain how I get the best results and what there is to consider. I hope you enjoy this and if you have any additional advice on the Water Marble technique, please share it in the comments for everyone to read! Click here, to find all my recent WM designs and check out my most popular WM design of all time:

Halloween Water Marble - October 2012 

The Material

Nail Polish, Tape, Cup, Distilled Water, Paper Towels, Needle, Wooden Stick / Dotting Tool, Tweezers, Nail Polish Remover, Clean Up Brush

The Preparation

1. Prepare 20 pieces of tape and stick them somewhere where you can easily take them off again (for example: the table where you're working at).

2. Take your cup and fill it with distilled water. The cup should be big enough, so that you can dip your nail inside without accidentally touching the sides of the cup. But it should be small enough, so that you don't use tons of water and polish. You could also use tap water, but in my opinion it works better with distilled water.

3. Usually you will need a base color for your WM, so now is the time to paint your nails with the base color and let it dry. Most of the times I use the lightest color of the design or just white. 

4. Now you can start adding the tape to your fingers. I do one hand at a time because it's usually not too comfortable. I use two pieces for each finger: one piece goes along one side to the front, under the nail and back on the other side. The other piece goes across the finger, right at the line of the cuticles, but not over the nail! I fold the ends, so it will be easier to remove the tape later. 

The Nail Polish & The Marbling

It's not easy to spot the nail polishes that will work for WM. New polishes with creme finish work well with WM, while old and gooey ones usually don't work. Also, very thin polishes are difficult to work with, because they might mix with your other colors in the water. If you're doing a WM and it just won't work, you have to try it with a different polish! Sometimes it is just one of your polishes, while other times some just won't work together. WM can be a b*tch sometimes. On the left picture below you can see how I first tried a black polish from The New Black, which didn't work at all. In the middle I moved on to Sally Hansen - Night Watch which works great. My white was Flormar - 400. 

Let the Marbling begin! Start adding drops of polish to the water, not from too high above. You might want to decide what kind of a marble you're going for before starting the process or you can just start with a random marble. There are so many different ways of marbling! My favorite WM artist on YouTube is My Simple Little Pleasures. I use a needle to do my designs because this gives beautiful and exact lines. Remove the excess polish on the needle every now and then. When you're done with the design, don't wait too long and slowly dip your nail inside the water. Leave your finger inside the cup, blow onto the water surface and remove all excess polish with the wooden stick. Then remove the finger. 

The Clean-Up

Remove the tape carefully with the tweezers. Now comes the important part. There will be water drops over and sometimes below the nail polish and if you don't do anything right there, you might end up with missing pieces in your design. Take a clean paper towel and carefully touch the water drop with the towel. This will absorb the water and at the best let the design stay intact. This part is a bit tricky to explain! But if you have already done WM before, you might have seen the design pulling at the edges. Most of the times this can be prevented with the paper towel. After that you can clean-up the sides of your nail with a brush and some nail polish remover. It's better if you wait a while before adding the top coat, because WM does smudge easily. If I have any missing pieces in my design, I try to cover them up with a bit of polish and a nail art brush. This works great and no one in real life will know!

I know that WM can often be a tricky technique and it is not always worth the effort, but I hope my post made some steps a bit easier to understand or at least makes you want to try it again! Feel free to leave links to your water marble designs, I'd love to see your creations! 

Sally Hansen - Designer Collection Part 1: Night Watch, New Wave Blue, Perfectly Poppy

Sally Hansen sent me their new Designer collection inspired by Tracy Reese, Rodarte & Prabal Gurung. I didn't want to simply swatch these colors but rather combine them in a nail art design. For a first part I chose a blue & red toned water marble. I used a dark navy called Night Watch (Prabal Gurung inspired), a beautiful turquoise called New Wave Blue (Tracy Reese) and a classic red called Perfectly Poppy (Tracy Reese). I swatched them with two coats each on one nail and the formula is smooth and fast drying. These are my first Sally Hansen polishes so I wasn't familiar with any of their products. I didn't like the brush a lot, it's rather chunky and looked a bit 'deformed', I prefer the long round brushes. For the water marble I used a white base to make the colors pop. These are pretty good for water marbling by the way! On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. Part 2 with three more colors will follow soon! This collection will be available in September for 8.99 Euro per 14.7 ml.  

Part 2: Coat Of Arms, Loden Green, Stocking Nude

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 14: Pride (Lemon Water Marble)

It's the last day of the Deadly Sins Challenge and the second day of Pride. I can't believe how fast these seven weeks went by and a bit sad it's over! I really enjoyed working at this challenge with all the other bloggers and I loved painting my nails based on given themes. The theme of Day 14 says: This is YOUR time! Brag about how good you are at...

Illustrations by: dahlig

Yay, bragging. So I know this will sound weird, because I mentioned this technique in my Wrath week. But actually I decided to 'brag' about Water Marbling, because even if it takes a lot of patience and can sometimes end in a disaster, it is the one technique that I improved the most in. While my first Water Marble was full of air bubbles and incomplete patterns, these days I usually manage to do a consistent and good-looking Water Marble. Then again, this is more a question of practice than of talent. This time I wanted to do a summer inspired marble and I chose white and yellow as my colors. I used two coats of Essie - Blanc as my base and then did the marble with Blanc, Anny - Sunshine In My Heart and China Glaze - Lemon Fizz. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. 

You can find all the designs of my Deadly Sins Challenge here. And please check out all the amazing designs by the other participants: 

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 4: Gluttony (Water Marble / Drippy Nails)

Skip your diet and paint something that makes your stomach growl! Today is Day 4 of the Deadly Sins Challenge and I painted something yummy on my nails! 

   Illustrations by: dahlig

I wanted to have some strawberry ice cream with chocolate drips on top and this is how I did it: I started with one coat of China Glaze - Something Sweet and then did a Water Marble with Something Sweet and Essence - Shopping Trip In Soho. This time I used the needle to paint a spiral in the water, which was quite difficult to achieve. On top of my marble I used Essie - Chocolate Cakes and a nail art brush to paint tiny drops of chocolate. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I really like the Drippy Nails, this was my first attempt, but I'm sure I will try these again soon! 

Blue Water Marble feat. p2 Volume Gloss - Heavenly Girl

Today's design is a simple water marble with three colors. I didn't pay much attention to getting a similar pattern on each nail, because basically I just want to show off my new pretty light blue nail polish. It's a new one from p2 called Heavenly Girl. It reminds me so much of summer and good times, so I had to wear it! I combined it with Maybelline Colorama - Urban Turquoise and p2 - Night Out. They all work great for water marble, but I had a lot of air bubbles, which didn't look too good after applying top coat. Oh well! :)

Essie Girls: Water Marble Video Tutorial

About a month ago I created a video tutorial for Essie Girls Switzerland. I decided to make a tutorial for Water Marble Nails which is one of my favorite techniques! If you're part of the Essie Girls app on Facebook you might have already seen my article. I used Essie - Snap Happy as my base color and then did the water marble with Snap Happy, A-List and Luxedo. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Tutorial in progress :)

You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you always want to be up to date with my videos. 

Valentine's Day Water Marble

Well, I didn't wear this one yesterday, but it fits the subject, right? I used two coats of Essie - Blanc as my base color because I'm never sure how good the white polish works for water marble. With an opaque base color I would have had the option to use a less opaque white for marbling. But Blanc worked pretty good to my surprise! So for the water marble I used Blanc, Essie - Watermelon and Essie - Need A Vacation. On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

Have a nice weekend! 

Tricolor Brown & Blue Water Spotted Nails

Last week cutepolish did an amazing and very unique tutorial on how to do Water Spotted Nails. To be honest I'm usually not a big fan of cutepolish, but this one just blew my mind! I have no idea how she came up with this, but it is hands down brilliant. I'm a big fan of OPI Black Spotted, but there's no way I could get my hands on it. But with this tutorial you're able to do Spotted Nails in every color possible. All you need is the usual stuff for water marbling and hand sanitizer. I had some problems with this one at first, because I bought the wrong sanitizer. After seeing the very pretty tutorial by Nailderella I bought a bottle of Merfen spray, which I think is less stronger than the one I used before. With Merfen the tutorial worked perfectly and so I did two versions of those Water Spotted Nails, one in brown and one in blue. 

For the first one I used two coats of Essie - Eternal Optimist as my base color. Then I  used Essie - Master Plan for the first spotted coat and Essie - Smokin' Hot for the second spotted coat. On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

For the second one I used two coats of China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint as my base color. Then I added the first spotted coat with China Glaze - Cheers To You and the second spotted coat with Essie - Mesmerized. On top is again one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

As you can see it is a bit difficult to do all the nails in a similar way. But just like with water marbling, I think it just takes a bit of practice and this will no longer be a problem. If it doesn't work for you try using a different sanitizer, this was my main problem. Now, how do you like this technique? Are you as excited as I am?