This is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Water Marbling

Hey all, today I have for you my Halloween Water Marbling attempt..I have water marbled with some success before, but the waters of marbling..she be finicky and unpredictable, just like the ocean. So I do have a halloweeny type water marble for you today..but it isn't the best in the world as I had ALL sorts of trouble with making patterns in the polish..it all just wanted to lift out in one piece whilst making the design..argh.

The colors I chose for the Halloween theme to water marble were, Kleancolor White as a base and China Glaze Liquid Leather, Kleancolor Metallic Purple, Butter London Slapper and China Glaze Japanese Koi and here is the (dubious?) results.

I quite like how the ring finger turned out!

 The thumb water marble swirls are pretty good too! :)

Not a complete nail art fail..but it was a struggle to get to this stage..I usually have a bit more patience but it wasn't in play today.

China Glaze Pastel Blue, Green and Pink Water Marble

Sorry for the lack of posts, sometimes life gets in the way of time for lovely nails and being time poor means no time for photos. Today though, my dear friend from work Lisa requested Mint nail polish. So this post is for you Bangers :) As I have recently discovered water marbling and how lovely this looks I thought I would do a minty marble look. My base mint polish was China Glaze Re-freshmint from the Up & Away Collection (2010) and I though Bahamian Escape (Bahama Blue Collection) and Something Sweet (also from the Up & Away Collection) would go lovely for water marbly goodness :)

 L-R, China Glaze Re-freshmint, Bahamian Escape and Something Sweet

I started with Ulta3 Base coat and 1 coat of Re-freshmint, I didn't take a photo so have referenced the Swatchaholic :)

China Glaze Re-freshmint, so minty and lovely :)

I then proceeded to water marble with the 3 colors.. some nails turned out better than others!

 Left Hand water marble, loving the middle finger nail marble effect :)

Left Thumb water marble

Right Hand water marble, loving the pointer finger nail marble effect :)

Right Thumb water marble

The photos have turned very pastel color wise, which they are in certain light. In non-bright light they are more vibrant, so I have color corrected a photos to show you this, don't mind the Opmpa Loompa skin effect!

Loving this water marble effect and the mint is awesome :) Thanks Lisa for suggesting the mint polish idea in my head (I even bought Re-freshmint on Tuesday with this in mind!). I am missing the happiness different nail polish color brings at my work so much now, what to do, what to do :(

On another note, I got up today like a good nail polish slave to buy some Sonoma Nail Art polish and had some in my cart on Etsy when I realized they didn't ship to Australia. Darn it. I did manage to get a bottle of all of the Dollish Mario Collection on Friday night (didn't think I was going to purchase any initially though!). I am getting a little bit glitter indie polish saturated..not sure how everyone else out there feels, but the hype is running it's course with me. I don't want to bun fight for polish anymore. I am wanting some Zoya's and Essies though so might focus on calmly purchase some colors there!

Kleancolor Salsa, Sally Hansen White Out and China Glaze Liquid Leather Watermarble

I stayed up wayyyyy to late last night and as a result of wandering around the internets and Youtube whilst watching North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell's book in TV mini series), I woke up this morning with an attitude of "I want to try water marbling, it looks great, lets give it a go". So, I sat there thinking about a color scheme that is work appropriate...looked at my bottle of Nostalgic As If! and decided I wanted to try a white, pink and black water marble :) I guess my hands will be in my pockets alot tomorrow!

Here is my bottle of inspiration:

Nostalgic As If! and macro of As If!

Here is the colors I chose to marble with were Sally Hansen White On, Kleancolor Salsa and China Glaze Liquid Leather.

 The way I water marbled was to use a very small glass ie. Sherry/port glass, similar to this size

It has a small water surface area, enough for 1 finger. I also used a toothpick, cotton bud and Micropore (Nursing tape) to create the effect. You can search you tube for great tutorial on the best was to water marble. I chose to tape around each nail to cover my finger and not get polish on my hands. This worked pretty well for minimizing mess and clean up. Not sure how regular tape would have done!

And here is the effect, the watermarble was done over Ulta3 base coat and 1 coat of Sally Hansen White on, topped with Seche Vite. Please ignore my dry cuticles!

Left Hand Water Marble Effort

Left Thumb

 Right Hand

Right Hand

Right Thumb

Here is a few Macro shots of the nails I particular like :)

Water marbling isn't that easy to get the design you want, it's messy but the clean up isn't too terrible for the end result. There are a few different methods, I was happy with the taping method and how the water marbling turned out :) Kleancolor Salsa turned out to be almost a 2 in 1 polish as the pink/gold shimmer seemed to separate in the water resulting in the bronze color you see in between the pink and black and I so glad that it happened, it made the mani really pop and blinged it up a bit! I did 2 nails over again as they had too much dark/black pigment with no swirly pattern.

Overall I was pretty chuffed with how my first attempt turned out. Hope you liked this mani and have had a go at water marbling, it's pretty fun!