In March of 2012 a friend of mine said to me that if I was really serious about getting into nail art then I just had to get an Instagram account. Apparently you could loose yourself for hours trolling through the stunning nail art pictures and following the moves of your favourite artists with a filtered view of their everyday lives. I quickly became addicted but Instragram has become more than just another social media platform. I have been fortunate to meet many like minded girls who also share a love of being creative and obsessing over nail polish. And its for all my IG friends that I braved the dreaded water marble. To our 10000 followers, thank you so so much for your support, encouragement and inspiration.
The jade green is BC 19 - a cheap polish from Kmart. The coloured glitter is Gloss n Sparkle - Unicorn droppings. To create the water marble I used Gloss n Sparkle Spectraflair Topcoat and BC 19 and the white is OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls.
This type of water marble design is a good one for beginners to try. You don't need to get all your drag lines super precise like you would in a flower or star marble design . Now I am far from an expert at water marbling but here are a few things that I do that may work for you.
- Room temperature filtered water
- Runny new polishes preferably from the same collection if you want to add multiple colours
- China Glaze is really hard to marble with!
- Use a plastic or glass cup not polystyrene - if you drop the polish too forcefully into the water and it sinks to the bottom it will eat a hole in the polystyrene cup and then you will have a flood. Disaster!
- Have paper towel nearby to wipe off your orange stick or toothpick.
To begin the marble I started with 2 drops of Spectraflair Topcoat. It spread perfectly in the water, right out to the edges of the cup. Then I continued by adding 1 drop of BC 19, then one drop of Spectraflair, then BC 19, back and forth until I had 7 layers like in the picture above. You can continue to build more layers to increase the surface area of the design but as I was only going to do one nail I just needed a small patch of design so I kept my bullseye small.
The next step is to take your orange stick or toothpick and draw from the centre of your bullseye up to the top of the cup, then again from the centre down to bottom of the cup. Keep wiping off your stick as needed so it doesn't get too gluggy. This will anchor your design to the cup and keep it from getting ruined as your draw your horizontal lines. This is super important, anchor the design to the cup by gently dragging the polish from the edge of the bullseye so it touches the cup in a least 2 places before you move on. See the big green blob at the top of the cup, thats where I anchored my bullseye.
Now take your stick and draw horizontally from side to side. The key here is to start dragging from a centimetre away from the edge of the cup, the polish wont be dry there like it is nearer to the edge. This will stop your design from ripping apart too. I anchor each line at the opposite end when I drag it.
To avoid a horrid clean up tape up your fingers. This type of design wasn't too hard to clean up but it you are using dark colours...use tape!
I never could have imagined that in just over a year we would have 10000 people followingour nail adventures on IG. We love reading your comments and we try to answer as many of your questions as we can. If you haven't delved into the world of #nailart on IG prepare to have hours of your life vanish as you ohh and ahh over the amazing creations. If you are inspired by our designs please tag us so that we can see. Again thank you everyone for your support and love #weloveyouguys
