Marble Nails

Hey Ladies,

I am not too hot on the old nail art but have been giving it a g ood go lately. Most recently I tried out nail marbling. It's not the easiest and you do need a bit of patience but it is totally worth a whirl because the designs they can come up with it are soooooo pretty.

The first time I tried it I used some pretty whites and pastel colours and they left a lovely design

I added this picture on Twitter last night when I had them finished and the lovely Kelly from http://bakesbeautyblog.blogspot.com/ asked if I would do a blog post about them. I decided to re-do them this evening in different colours and take some pics to show you how I did it. (PS if you haven't checked out Kelly's blog you should she has some great posts on there :-)

So here is what you need to do this and remember it can be very messy so if you need to put down some paper do. I was at my make up desk so I was fine.

I like to keep some baby wipes beside me for any messy spills. Tape to cover your fingers to help with the clean up. The polishes you want to do the design in. A little wooden cuticle stick. A glass or bowl for your water and I like to keep a little dish for the dirty pieces of tape. You also need a top coat and a base coat.

The first step is to apply a base coat and then I apply 2 coats of a base colour. On the first day I used a white base colour and today I used ELF polish in Desert Haze.

Then what I did was tape up my fingers. The first day I didn't do this and by golly was there a mess to be cleaned up. Here is how I taped them. I had some medical tape in the press so I just used that and wrapped a section around my finger under the nail and then around the top and back of my finger. I hope these pics show it ok.

 

 

So that was how I wrapped my fingers. Next is to get the nail polish and water solution ready. You must be quick in doing this as the nail polish actually dries pretty quickly in the water. I chose 3 colours, OPI's Russian Navy is the blue, Essence Most Wanted is the browny colour and No. 7 Golden colour (name was gone off bottle).

 

Fill your glass with water. I used tap water the first time and then tonight I had put water by in a bottle since last night to see if it would make any difference and it didn't so either would do. Then you simply let a drop of polish drop from the brush into the water. Once it hits the water it should spread out across the glass. Quickly add a drop of your next colour to the middle of the blue. It will spread out and leave a layer of blue to the outside. Then drop a drop of the gold and it will spread in the same way. I repeat this three times in total and as you get closer to the centre it spreads less and less. Here are some pics to show you.

Then use your little stick to drag the polish in until you get a design similar to this (you can use your own design I just like this one, also sorry I couldn't do it and take a pic at the same time)

Now I know on all of the tutorials I have watched they say you have to do this for each finger, I am afraid I do not have the patience for this so I whacked three fingers in at once :) So what you do at this point is you choose the part of the pattern you would like applied to your fingers and you place your fingers in the water and the polish will stick to your nails. Use your little stick to kind of edge the remaining polish away from your nails before you take them out. This is the messy sight that greets you when you take your fingers out.

When you take off the tape - I do this by starting it with a tweezers and then pulling it off - you should have something like this.

Then simply repeat for your other fingers. Once you have done all of your fingers, before the clean up, I applied my top coat. Left it to dry for a bit and then soaked a cotton bud in nail polish remover and moulded it around the pointy side of the wooden stick. I then ran it around all the areas that had the excess polish to remove it. I haven't quite prefected it yet but they are not too bad.

So let me know what you think :)

XX