Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Day 20: Water Marbled

I am not one to get scared easily. Okay maybe that's a lie. But it made a nice segue into today's nails. Let's start over.

I get scared very easily, and one thing that scares me is water marbling. The last time I tried water marbling was about as attractive as your MOM and so I haven't tried it since. But since it was part of the challenge, I had no choice. I would plow bravely on!

And I made a semi-tutorial! Let's take a look.

1. Gather your supplies. You'll need:
- water (distilled or bottled works best, don't ask me why)
- nail polish (3-5 colors is best). I used: Ulta Blue Streak, American Apparel Peacock, and Zoya Charla
- a cup (you'll definitely want this to be disposable)
- toothpicks
- petroleum jelly or tape. You're supposed to put one of these around your nails in order to make cleanup easier. I decided to try petroleum jelly since it seemed less wasteful than tape.

2. Here is your cup. It's filled with water. This is important.

3. Plunk drops of your nail polish in circles until it looks satisfactory. It will look cool. Don't admire it for too long, or it will form a kind of "skin" on the surface of the water and you won't be able to swirl it around because it will all just stick to the toothpick and clump up and be disgusting.

4. Swirl it around. I know this is hard to see since the cup is greenish and Charla is sheerish

5. Dip your finger into a part of the swirly polish that looks cool. 

(P.S. The petroleum jelly didn't help. I recommend tape)

Voila. I gave up on the vaseline and decided to just be ridiculously messy. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any good shots outside, but for a good reason: it finally RAINED! Which is definitely a great thing. So these are all under the lamp.





And this is the only shot I got outside.

Oh by the way, I used OPI Mermaid's Tears as underwear for this. You should always wear underwear when water marbling. .....*cough* Anywho.

This turned out pretty cool. I had to redo a ton of my nails because they turned out LAME but now it looks awesome. Because I am awesome. I conquered my water-marble-o-phobia.

I fear NOTHING!

20 comments:

  1. Awesome marble with a great colour combination!

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  2. I love your polish choices. I completely understand you being afraid of watermarbling because it can be crazy difficult and frustrating. How do you swirl your polish? Do you just pull it from the middle?

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  3. My mother is smoking hot, thank you very much. Jeez, people these days...

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  4. Your last water marble must have been a big success, cause my mom is uber attractive! Tsk!

    I suck at water marbling and have been successful all of once. So don't feel bad. I just hate how messy and wasteful it is. I'm not willing to go to all that trouble to practice and get any better either! Lol

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  5. I fear water marbling. I can safely say I will never, ever do this, even if your results are beautiful and I am deeply jealous.

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  6. @Let's Get Nailed: Yep! That's exactly how you do it! You can swirl it around however you want, really.

    @Anna and Leslie: LOL, you both said stuff about your moms!

    @Larie: It's not that bad! Well yeah, it's a lot of work, but look how cool it is!

    @Nail Polish Anon: Tell me something I don't know! Just keeeedding! Thanks!

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  7. It looks awesome, you did great!

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  8. WOW WOW WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I know I always say this but this is my favorite!!! EVER!!!

    THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!!! This is one of those days where you should keep it on for longer than 24 hours, that's how goregous this is!

    Oh and mi madre and your last marbling are both pretty good if you ask me!

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  9. [Enter pun about lack of underwear and nail porn]

    So jealous. ;[ Might try give this a go but it's just destined to fail. xD I think I might just stick with my usual colour block tips and leaf/floral/lace patterns..

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  10. I love how yours came out. I did a similar post on my blog. I may try these colors when marbling next time. Now on to trying to find Zoya's Charla, lol. I love my mom and your first try turned out great so I guess my mom is hot LMBO

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  11. this is one of the best water marbles I have seen.. congrats on conquering your water-marble-o-phobia :-P .. looks awesome!!!

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  12. This is really awesome! I love the look of water marbling but yours is the first blog I've seen actually show how messy your nails get! I'm way too lazy for all that cleanup! Very cool!

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  13. This looks awesome!

    The one time I tried it.. well it wasn't pretty!

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  14. wow!! loved it :) I am so into water marbling...but mine fails every time :D

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  15. @Meg: Too late, it's already gone!

    @Naomi: You should try it! Take risks! Be adventurous!

    @Fingers: Tape helps a lot! It's much better than the petroleum jelly.

    @all of you guys: You should try water marbling more! Seriously, practice helps. A lot. Start by using some lame polish that you don't care about, and once you get the hang of it, go crazy!

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  16. Wow those colours go really well together! I need to do this again soon. I did one about a year ago and I loved it, but I haven't done it since.

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  17. You got SO MUCH better!!! It's beautiful :0

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  18. This is was a really helpful tutorial. Water marbling also really scares me, but perhaps now I will go try some.

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