My first ever water marble!

Brynn @ A Painted World

My first ever water marble!

Ever since I saw a picture of a water marble I was fascinated! I automatically assumed it was complicated and dismissed the idea of ever doing it. Then I happened to come across a video tutorial on Youtube when I was browsing other nail videos. When I saw how simple it seemed I decided to give it a try. Then I put it off and sort of avoided it. Call me a chicken.

Then last night I once again was stuck on what to do next. I needed to do something because I can no longer leave my nails naked but I'm expecting my new Zoya order tomorrow (yay!). I left it up to the hubby again and of course the first thing he said was to do a marble. Sigh. He picked three colors he thought would be good together and declared it my new mani. So off I went and it was horrible. The nail polish decided it hated my water and refused to cooperate. I was frustrated and quite annoyed. So I ditched my room temperature filtered water and cleaned up the mess and walked away. I gave up.

Then this afternoon I decided I must win. I couldn't let it beat me. I grabbed some room temperature distilled water instead and gave it another try. Guess what? Success! It worked and I was thrilled. I taped up my fingers like one tutorial said which was weird and sometimes difficult. Especially when I had to finish the last few fingers with the others covered in tape. Anyway, I picked an order for the colors and dove right in. I'm very happy to say that I now have 10 water marbled nails and I'm very happy with how it looks. Was it messy? Oh my god yes! It's almost insane. I had so many toothpicks covered in nail polish, the bowl looked like half a rainbow exploded and very colorful pieces of tape were scattered around my table. I should have taken a picture of the aftermath but I didn't. In the end though, this was my result.

TaDa! My hubby's three choices were Zoya Breezi, Essie Turquoise & Caicos and Orly Blackout. He apparently really likes Zoya Breezi since it's the second time in a month that he picked it as part of his choice. The colors actually worked really well together and all three spread across the surface of the water pretty well. Its funny how doing basically the same pattern each time created such different results. It's actually fun to watch different designs appear in the bowl. Mine was wide enough that I could do two fingers at a time which made it much quicker.

You can see a little smudging at the base of my pinky from when I removed the tape. After that I cut the rest of the pieces off to avoid messing up all the work I had just finished. Even though Orly Blackout is normally quite dark, once it was in the middle of the marble and other colors it actually appears slightly brown on the nail. There's only one nail that it actually came out dark enough to be an obvious black. I'm still really happy with it though whether it looks brown or black.

So, would I do a marble again? I think so. It's fun to play with the nail polish and create a unique design in the water. Would I do anything different? Besides trying other colors, not really. I will cut the tape off all the nails next time but that's the only change. The tape is worth the effort as it made cleanup much faster. There was very minimal nail polish on my skin so it only too a couple q-tips to clean up the very edges of all 10 nails. I will jump right to the distilled water next time since that obviously worked much better. I guess our filtered tap water just isn't friendly enough. Would I recommend a water marble to someone else? Sure! As long as you're prepared for the mess and possible frustration if your nail polish and water won't play together. In the end it really does create an interesting effect.

Tomorrow my new Zoya order should arrive as long as FedEx delivers like they said they would! I took advantage of their promotion for reaching 50,000 'likes' which offers a free bottle of their Remove+ with any purchase. It's still going if you're interested and you have until the 24th! I can't wait to try their polish remover for the first time and play with my new colors.

Happy weekend!