Water Marble: Tutorial, Tips and Tricks

Today's post is all about water marbling. This was the first nail art I ever tried and I will be honest. I sucked at it. It took me a few months to even want to attempt it again. Since then I have learned quite a few things about water marbling that I thought I would share since I've gotten a lot of questions about it lately. These are all going to be things I've picked up from others and things I've learned along the way. I hope this will help answer some of the questions I've gotten. Warning: This is going to be as detailed as I can get it with quite a few pictures. This will be a 2 part blog post. Part 2 will be all about water marble designs. Look for that over the next week or so.

My Supplies:

Acetone-For cleanup

Old nail polish remover lid- For cleanup, used for the acetone

White Polish- Any that you are comfortable with

Paper cup- It does not have to be paper, thats just what I use

Cuticle Stick- For the marble process

Toothpick- For cleaning up the polish in your cup

Tape- To help with cleanup

Polish Remover- For close up cleaning afterwards

Cotton Balls- For cleanup that your tape does not prevent

You don't have to use the same supplies that I use. Use whatever works best for you. This is just what works for me. Everyone is different.

Bottled Water VS Tap Water

When I first started I thought a lot of my problem was the type of water I was using. I had seen everywhere that you must use bottled or filter water. NOT TRUE. Don't let anyone tell you that you cant use tap water. Two things I will point out however. One, bottled water does work better but IS NOT needed. Also, if you decide to use tap water, fill your cup the night before and just let it sit out.

 Polishes Used are all Pure Ice: Show Stopper, Black out and Drive me crazy

Here you can see the difference. The picture on the left is using bottled water. No there is no color difference when using bottled water vs tap water, my twins just thought it would be funny to make shadows as mom was taking pictures and I was to hot to argue or retake the 2nd picture. Lol gotta love 7 year olds. The picture on the right is using tap water that has sat overnight. Sorry about the messiness. I've used this cup several times. You can see that the picture on the left (bottled) spreads to the edge of the cup while the picture on the right (tap) does not. No big deal. Take your cuticle stick at the edge of your design and drag a little to the edge of the cup. I get the same results when using both bottled and tap water.

Spreading

Typically it does not matter what polish brand you use for water marbling. I've used the cheaper brands from L.A. Colors to more expensive brands like OPI. Any brand that I have used has worked. There are different types of polishes that will not work but I will get to that further down. Below I will show you how polish spreads with 4 different brands of polish. Click image to see polishes used.

The top left hand picture looks different because in some designs it requires drawing from the center to one side and from the center to the other side. That will be more discussed in Part 2 of this post.

Some polish types (not brands) WILL NOT work for marbling such as glitters and mattes. If you can prove me wrong on this please feel free to. I have gotten neither one of these types to work and would love to see it, if possible. Below is a picture showing how well, or not well matte polish spreads. Shimmer polishes may or may not work. I've had some that do and some that don't.

Sorry for the ugliness of this picture. They are actually very pretty polishes, by themselves that is. As you can see the first few rings spread very well, but as we get to the center of it, it stops. I think this has to do with how fast a matte polish dries but I could be wrong. An alternative to marbling with mattes would be after finishing you marbled nails, use a matte top coat. Problem solved, except not being able to use the matte color itself.

Long nails VS short nails

You do not need long nails to water marble nor do you need short nails. Below I will show you a comparison between the two. The long nails version is on an acrylic nail that I glued to a toothpick. The short nail version is on my own nails.

Darn, time to take a break. I thought I had all my images prepared and apparently I dont have these two pictures combined. Now I could have just continued on with the post and you would have never known that this happened, but what fun would that be. So how about you take a short break with me right after you finish reading this paragraph. As long as you come back and finish reading. Lol. We are almost done.

As you can see you get a little more of the design on a longer nail but you can still achieve pretty close to the same look on shorter nails. For this design I used the Wet N Wild Polished above in the spreading section of this post. Click the image to get a better look.

For this one, which was actually my favorite of the bunch, I used all L.A. Colors polishes. Again refer to the spreading part of this post for polishes used. I love this color combination so much that I left them sitting out to use them again.

This design is using the Sinful colors polishes listed above. If you scroll back up to the spreading section you will see there is a shimmer polish in the very center of the bulls eye of this one. That polish does not show up in this design which is why I excluded the name.

For the last design I used OPI and Nicole by OPI. These polishes work great however I dont own many of them, so the colors I used didn't show very well. You can see the colors I used above.

Tips and Tricks

• When taping my fingers to help with cleanup, I wait to tape them until I have my design ready. Right before I dip my finger is when I put the tape on because with the specific tape that I use, once its on for a few minutes as soon as it hits the water my tape seems to gum up on me when I remove it. This may not be true for all tape as this is the only tape I've used so far. Unless you are dipping multiple fingers at once then I would tape before you make your design.
• After you dip you finger and clean the polish off the surface of the water, give your finger a little shake, without hitting the side of the cup. This will remove MOST water bubbles.
• I've had a lot of success using Pure Ice nail polish, however, as stated above any polish that I've tried has worked. During the making of this post I actually tried Wet N Wild for the first time in marbling and it works pretty good too. My favorite to use so far has been Pure Ice.
• I forgot to mention above that the purpose of the white polish listed in my supplies is to use as a base to make your colors more bold.
• Another thing not mention. I do not use my cuticle stick to clean up the surface because I want to keep that stick as clean as possible to get the best lines. You don't want to gunk up your design stick and have big thick lines in your design. Which is why I use a tooth pick for cleanup.

Water marbling will take some practice and some failures. I wish I would have kept pictures from when I started to share with you here, but I got so frustrated with it that they were all deleted.

Please feel free to share any of you water marbling pictures with me on my Facebook page, Polished By Audison 

I would love to see any and all. The good, the bad and the ugly. Hehe. Also if you have any question feel free to contact me on my Facebook page above.

I will be making a 2nd part to this post as stated at the beginning of this. It will focus mainly on water marble designs, since there are probably more than I've even tried. I will also add anything there that may have been forgotten here or asked about in the time between this post and the next.

Thanks for sticking with me and I hope this helps even just one person. I've spent about 5 hours on just the marbling and taking pictures and I've now spent almost 3 hours on editing pictures and typing all this up. Enjoy.

Disney Challenge Day 8: Tangled

Today is Day 8 of the Disney challenge. Yes, I skipped a day. Day 8 is Tangled. I only just recently saw this movie for the first time and loved it, along with almost every other Disney movie out there.

I am not at all happy with how this one turned out and I forgot to add a top coat so she is not shiny. LOL.

This was my first attempt at a face and she looks more like a pig. HEHE. Oh well she is still kinda cute. Next up is 101 dalmations.

Check out the other Tangled post

Creations By Lynda: Fusion

Today I have another polish from Creations By Lynda. This one is called fusion and I dont know why I havent swatched this yet. I am horrible at describing polishes and am still learning the differences in all polishes from glitter types to the type of polish itself so I will let the pictures speak for themselves until I figure this all out. LOL.

Fusion from Creations By Lynda

                                          Excuse the dryness of my fingers and cuticles. :)

I love everything about this polish from the color to the glitter and everything in between. I only use 2 coats.

You can find Creations by Lynda on Facebook Here or you can go directly to her store Here

Disney Challenge Day 6: Bambi

Today is day 6 of the Disney challenge with Bambi. This post is going to be a little different. No editing pictures and unfortunatly no watermarks on the pictures. I am at my moms due to my trailer park flooding. So here are the pictures of my Bambi challenge.

I also dont have a list of polishes and acrylic paints that I used. I will add those later.

Use the links below to check out the others from the Bambi challenge.

Disney Challenge Day 5: Beauty and the Beast

Today is day 5 of the Disney challenge with Beauty and the Beast. I decided to use my newly bought acrylic paints on this challenge. My first time ever using acrylic paints and let me tell you. I am extremely happy with how this turned out. I will definitely be adding more colors to my acrylic paint collection. So far I have 6, including the basic white and black. Anyways onto the pictures.

Here is my inspiration. My 6 year old twins have a huge Disney Princess book with almost 400 pages. So I decided to see what I could find. You may see this book come up in future challenges.

I'm really happy with how Cogsworth turned out. Not exactly sure what is going on with my middle finger. It was suppose to represent Mrs. Pott and Chip. I am so excited with how Cogsworth turned out that I could have smudged and smeared the rest of my fingers and still be happy with this mani.

Isnt he so cute

Polish Used:

Sinful Colors-Unicorn

Pure Ice- Show Stopper

Acrylics used (All are Apple Barrel)"

White

Black

Nutmeg Brown

Bimini Blue

Bright Magenta

To see other Beauty and the Beast challenge pictures from the other lovely ladies, use the links below. Next up is Bambi

Disney Challenge Day 4: The Little Mermaid

Todays post is Day 4 of the Disney challenge with The Little Mermaid. Its 2 days late but its here. I was definitely not happy with how these turned out. Well I will just show my picture and explain after.

I was in a water marble mood. This was the last one I had done for the day and I think my water had too much extra and old polish left in it which Is why I ended up with so many bubbles. Also I was going for a flounder look. I tried to make a majority of it yellow since most of flounder is yellow. I think with doing that, It mixed to much with the blue and just made the entire thing greenish. I may try this one again.

Polish Used:

Pure Ice-Showstopper

Sinful Colors-Why not

Sinful Colors-Sugar Rush

To see the other Little Mermaid nails, check out the links below. Next up Beauty and the Beast.

Disney Challenge Day 3: The Fox and the Hound

Day 3 of the Disney challenge is The Fox and the Hound. This is by far one of my favorites of the older Disney movies. With this challenge I decided to push myself a bit. This is the first time I have ever done a picture. I'm not very happy with it, but hey you gotta start somewhere. Sorry for the awful lighting and color distortion. Its been really stormy and gloomy here for the past 3 or 4 days.

Polish Used:

L.A.Colors-Whipped

L.A. Colors-Palm Tree

Pure Ice-Super Star

Pure Ice-Black Out

Pure Ice-Drive Me Crazy

Next up is The Little Mermaid

See what others did for this challenge using the links below.

Creations By Lynda: Fairytale Dreams Collection Review

Today I have a new and first collection by Creations By Lynda. This collection is based off of a TV show called Once Upon A Time. I have never seen the show so I'm not going to make any references to it. However after hearing about it and reviewing this collection, it does seem rather interesting. Onto the polish.

I was super excited when I got the email saying I had been chosen. I've had my eye on a few of these since Lynda started posting about them. I love all of the colors and love how they all looked.
Sorry about the orange tints to some of the pictures. Its been stormy and gloomy the past few days. I wanted to re-swatch but the weather hasn't allowed that and I really wanted to get this up.

First up is Snow Day. It is a very very soft pale bluish silver with squared pale blue glitters. I love the frostiness to this polish however, having to do 2 coats really covers up the beauty of the glitter.

Next up is Swan Song. This was one I had been eye balling. This one is a very frosty, I would say almost lilac color with darker hexagon glitters. This required 2 coats and was actually one that I was very pleased with. The polish did not take away from the glitter on this one.

Charming One is a very pretty shimmery green. It has pale blue hexagon and square glitters, larger dark blue hexagon glitters, and yellow hexagon glitter. This took 2 coats. Same with the previous polish, the glitters really shown through. One of my faves.

Next we have Golden Spindle. I was really against this one when I first saw it. But I will say now after seeing it in person and on my nails, this is definitely towards the top of my list. Golden Spindle is a golden yellow base dark green shard glitters. I applied 2 coats.

Crimson Wolf is a deep red color with almost a slight orange tint to it, maybe its just my eyes seeing that. It has holographic squared glitters. I applied 2 coats. I had a problem with this one being a little thicker as you might be able to see toward the end of my nails. Still a very pretty one.

Last, but definitely not least. Wicked Enchantment. This was the one I was the most excited for. What more could you want in a polish. Two of my favorite things. Purple and Stars. If this would have been the only one to show up, I would have still been excited about this review. This polish is a very deep shimmery purple (which I love) with silver star glitters. The only problem I had with it was digging out the stars to put on my nails. I did not have one single star come out on my brush. Word of advise. This polish is definitely worth digging for the stars. I applied 2 coats, not including the extra that may have gotten on from placing the stars.

Did I mention I love love love this one.

Overall I love this collection. I love the colors, the glitters and the fact that they are based off of a fairytale show. I love fairy tales. I'm gonna have to look into this show. I only had 2 problems with these polishes which is to be expected with a first time release. Some of them were  a little on the thick side but manageable. A few of them I felt the polish overtook the glitters. I definitely love everything about this collection though. Nice job Lynda.

I have one more polish for Creations By Lynda but I'm going to hold of on posting that for 2 reason. One I haven't swatched it yet, and two, I think I will save it for another post, or maybe a Facebook swatch exclusive. Listen to me getting all technical, like I have 15,000 fans. Lol. Someday. 

You can find Creations by Lynda on Facebook HERE. You can find her store located HERE along with other things she sells. Hope you enjoyed this and I will see you next time.

Thanks Lynda for the opportunity to swatch and review your collection.

Disney Challenge Day 2: The Jungle Book

Todays theme in the Disney Challenge was The Jungle Book. I will admit that I struggled with this one. This was/is probably my least favorite Disney movie. My 6 year old twins would not even finish the movie with me. I have to give a huge thanks to Heather for the inspiration behind what I chose to do. So here they are.

My story starts at my pinkie with the leaves representing the jungle. Then we got to the ring finger being Shere Khan. The middle and pointer fingers are Baloo and Mowgli escaping the jungle and Shere Khan. First time doing actual footprints and thank god they turned out because when I first started making them it was looking like something I will not mention here.

Polished Used:

Sinful Colors-Slate

L.A.Colors-Whipped

L.A.Colors-Palm Tree

Pure Ice-Drive Me Crazy

Pure Ice-Black Out

To find out what others did, check out the links below.

Hard Candy Adventure/Review

I know there are a lot of Hard Candy Polish reviews out there but I want to tell what I went through just to get these. Also you will find swatches of the ones I managed to get. Warning: Pic Heavy.

I had been to 3 different Wal-Marts over the course of about 3 weeks searching for the new Hard Candy Polishes. None of them had them in stock. Finally, one day I was there with my mom to pick up some chicken for supper on an overnight with her. I decided to check once again. Guess what! Still no polishes. So we decided to ask someone if and when they would have them. I waited around for about 10 minutes and finally I see a worker walk around the corner and give the shelves a once over then she disappeared. So I walked around checking out other polishes and I hear an "Excuse Me, can I help you?"

I waited on this worker as he scanned the display shelf and told me he would check in the back because it said they should have some. So I walked around some more. While waiting for him to return this is what the display shelf looked like.

He then returns with a box. I literally sat on the floor in Wal-Marts nail polish aisle for an hour and a half helping him unbox 4 of each of the 45 polishes. Each tiny box had 2 polishes to it.

After an hour and a half we finally had them all out for me to look at. OMG I was in love with every last one of them. I wanted to take them all home. I was unable to. I managed to select 6 of them, which was a very hard decision. These are the 6 that I chose.

Onto the swatches. First up we have Piece of Papaya and Sparked up.

Piece of Papaya 632 is a shimmery pinkish coral color with an orange/gold hint to it.I only applied 2 coats.

Sparked up 673 has green and blue bar glitter. I only applied 2 coats.

Next up we have Glamour Girl and Glitter Jam.

Glamour Girl 670 has micro pink glitter with larger pink hex glitters. I only applied 2 coats.

Glitter Jam 666 (yes that is the number on it) is a purple/magenta micro glitter with green, yellow, and blue hex glitters. I only applied 2 coats.

For the last 2 we have Mermaid Magic and Hip Hop Hooray

Mermaid Magic 668 has micro teal glitters with larger purple hex glitter. I only applied 2 coats.

Hip Hop Hooray 653 has micro purple glitter, larger yellow, blue, orange and purple hex glitter. It also has even larger white, silver and black hex glitters. I applied two and a half coats. What I mean by that is I applied 2 coats, then went back and filled in any bald spots.

 Each of these polishes cost $4 at Wal-Mart, as long as you can find them.

Overall I am very happy with all of these. I wish I could own every single one of them but unfortunately I can no longer find them. I am also on a NO-BUY until the 23rd of this month (April). I definitely would love to have the entire collection. 

Disney Challenge Day 1: Alice in Wonderland

This is my first challenge...ever. I love Disney movies so this was a great first challenge to do. Day one of the challenge is Alice in Wonderland. Here are my nails inspired by the original Alice in Wonderland movie.

My pointer and ring fingers were inspired by The Cheshire Cat. Middle finger is inspired by The Queen of Hearts. Finally my pinkie finger was inspired by The Mad Hatter. Hopefully as this challenge goes on I will get better. Next up is The Jungle Book. Check out other bloggers Alice in Wonderland nails below.