Grey Water Marble with Dots

Today's design started out with a great idea and then ended up not too great. I planned on doing a Water Marble like I did here but with grey colors. But then I had to learn that Water Marble really is one of a kind and very unpredictable. It just didn't work out as I wanted it to and although I used the same black as with the previous Water Marble, this time the black kept on drying too fast in the water. Well, I managed to finish it somehow in a random look so I decided to spice it up with some dots. And it went from boring to way too much details, I couldn't stop dotting! I used p2 - Eternal, Catrice - London's Weather Forecast and Artdeco - 108 in the Water Marble and with the dots. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. 

Today the voting for the Essie Girls contest has ended and with your help and a lot of begging I made it to the Top 10! The jury will decide next week which 5 girls will win the contest. Thank you for voting and wish me luck for the final round! 

Halloween Water Marble

And some more Halloween nails! The classic Halloween colors combined in one Water Marble. Before I started on my own nails, I tried three different purple nail polishes on a plastic nail. I tried Essence - Passion For Fashion which would have been exactly what I was going for - in the bottle. Through the marbling however it got really bright and almost sheer. Next was Catrice - Doris' Darling which worked fine for marbling but didn't fit with my orange. So I tried Manhattan - Acai Power Berry, a dark purplish blue which turned out to be the perfect fit. As a base I used two coats of Essie - Blanc and then started the marbling with China Glaze - Papaya Punch, p2 - Eternal and Manhattan - Acai Power Berry. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer

To see the marbling technique I used in this design, have a look at her video. 

Candy Water Marble

Inspired by my recent water marble success I tried various other combinations and one of them is today's Candy Nail design. It resulted from my failure in creating thin lines inside the water bowl. Basically this one is the finer version of my Blue & White Water Marble from last Friday.

I used a white base for this one: China Glaze - Snow. I did it first without the white and it didn't work because my colors didn't pop. For the water marble I used China Glaze - Pool Party and China Glaze - For Audrey. Afterwards I think a brighter mint color would have been better for the marble. So just to describe you roughly what I did to get this marble pattern: I added alternately 4 drops of each color and then dragged the needle from left to right and back until all polish was mixed. I expected to get stripes at this point but I didn't so I just dragged across and got very fine curved lines. I have to admit that I had to do some nails twice because it was quite difficult to get it similar each time. 

On top is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat. This one reminds me a lot of Candy Canes and it makes me think of Christmas... haha, yeah well, first comes Halloween, I can wait.

Don't forget, you have until Friday 12am EST to join my 500 GFC Followers Giveaway! I can't believe there are 579 Followers today, thank you so much! 

Blue & White Water Marble with Essie Colors

As promised a new water marble design, up to date with each nail almost looking the same! I really wanted to create water marble designs like this one since I first started, but I never really gave an effort to see why it didn't work. So this time I watched a lot of tutorials on Youtube, the ones where the water marble pros do awesome marble designs which I couldn't ever imagine doing. For example My Simple Little Pleasures, who does awesome step-by-step tutorials. I really had a flash of inspiration looking at her tutorials and the most important thing I learned was to dip in the needle in the middle of the marble. Sounds really easy, right? Why didn't I do that earlier? It helps to keep the polish in place, which makes it easier to plan the design. 

I applied one coat of Essie - Blanc at first and then started my marble design with Blanc and Mesmerized. Adding alternately three drops of each color I then started with the design. I chose to do four draws outside and then four draws back in the middle, just like in this video. As you can see, she dips the chopstick in the middle and creates a very symmetric design. That was actually the first time I had such a pretty marble inside the water bowl! So then I could chose the exact spot to put my nail in and did that with every nail. I had to do my pinky nail twice though because it wasn't straight at the first try. 

The Essie colors worked fine, as you can see the blue wasn't completely opaque and it made some air bubbles in the water. But nothing I couldn't work with. So despite the fact that water marble is very time- and polish-consuming I really want to learn more about water marbling and try more different designs. After my first success I tried to do stripes and failed big time, haha! But I'm sure I will be able to do some candy cane marbling for Christmas, there's enough time to learn ;)

Remember, there is one more week to join my Mavala Giveaway! You can win the full Delicious Colours collection, so fill in the Rafflecopter form if you haven't done so already. It will end at 12 AM EST 08/31/2012.

Pastel Water Marble with Glitter Accent Nail

After all the recent pastel designs I wanted to do another one, but this time as a water marbling. As always it was pretty difficult to get the water marble how I wanted it to look like. But it seems like I found a way to do it right this weekend and I'm going to show you the result of my experiment this week as well. But for today you need to make do with my first version.

I started with one coat of Essie - Lilacism to get a good base for my water marble, so there wouldn't be any gaps in between my cuticles and the design. For the water marble I used Essie - Lilacism, Mint Candy Apple and Lapis Of Luxury, which is almost invisible on the nail. I added alternately two drops of each color to the distilled water and then dragged the polish with a needle. As you can see, not a single one of my nails looked the same and my ring finger nail was barely covered with the marble. So I decided to get some glitter involved and "dipped" my accent nail into Essence - Glitterastic. One coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on top and there goes my last random water marble. Stay tuned for the next one! 

And I'd like to remind you of my Giveaway which is ending on 31th of August. Click here to join and fill in the Rafflecopter form! 

Good Luck!

Furthermore, you might have already noticed that I have updated my page "About Me" and added two new ones "FAQ" and "Video Tutorials". Go check them out if you haven't already and feel free to add more questions and/or give me feedback!

 

Black & White Water Marble

I haven't done a water marble design in a while, I guess just because I remember it as being a bit complex. Of course it takes a little more time to do a water marble design instead of just painting your nails. But if you prepare well you will be done much faster than with a lot of other nail art techniques! 

These are the things I prepare before starting my design:

• A glass of distilled water
• My nail polish selection 
• 20 pre-cut sticky tapes (2 for each finger to protect the skin from polish)
• Tweezers (to remove the tape without messing up my nails)
• A sheet of paper (to stick on the tape after use)
• A paper towel (to clean up my tools and get rid of waterdrops)
• A needle (to marble of course)
• Toothpicks (to remove the polish floating around my nails)

For today's design I have painted my nails the evening before with two coats of NYX Matte White. For the water marble I chose Catrice - Snow Motion (because I wasn't sure matte nail polish would work and because Snow Motion isn't too precious for me) and Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I used one coat of Seche Vite on top.

Water marble is always a little bit tricky, since you don't really know how it's gonna look in the end. So I had my problems first with the black spreading too much and covering the white on my nails. You can see the grey on my pinky nail. I don't really have advice on how to avoid this. I guess water marbling is also a matter of luck sometimes!