We’ve made it to the halfway mark of Short And Sweet in Texas‘ nail art challenge! Day 15 is all about water marble..if you don’t know what it is here’s a good youtube video by DearNatural62. If you’ve ever water marbled before then you know how fun it is to pick out a bunch of cool colors for your swirly design! But have you ever thrown a clear polish in the mix??? That’s what I’m experimenting with today- water marbling with clear polish!
I started by painting my nails with a cool combo of 3 neon colors. It looked awesome so I took some pics which I may share on day 22/neon day of the challenge 🙂 Then I did the water marbling technique using only 2 polishes- clear and black. So basically I dripped drops of black, then clear, black then clear, etc into the cup… and when I swirled it around with a toothpick I got this cool black design with clear ‘spaces’ in between. The spaces allow the bright neon to show through from underneath. Pretty neat! Then I made a few polka dots using my black polish and a dotting tool just to spice it up (and fill in the gaps).
And in case you are wondering how clear polish works for marbling…. other bloggers have said that topcoat or clear polishes don’t spread well in the water. I actually experienced the opposite- I found that my Sally Hansen Nail Shine Miracle actually spread better than all of my other pigmented polishes! This is great news for me since I thought I hated my Nail Shine Miracle- I never use it as a topcoat since it bubbles and takes forever to dry. But now that I know it works for marbling- it has a new purpose in my stash!
I like how bright this design is in real life- it’s kinda crazy lookin! I went outside during sunset and my polish was so neon it nearly jumped right off of my fingers! Too bad I didn’t get that cool ‘signature’ swirly marble design though- I wound up with these black and clear stripes instead. No matter what I did I just couldn’t get my polish to drag properly with the toothpick. So no swirls for this girl…. but my black and clear stripes still look cool! Water marbling… why you so tricky?
Craftynail 
This is so cool! The effect is awesome!!
Thanks!! I think you can try it with some of those super sheer polishes too- I never know what to do with them!
This is insanely cool – what a great idea! Those neons really POP did you paint them over a white base?
I painted them over my handy dandy orly ridge filler. They only needed two coats and I swear- before I bought the ridge filler- i used to need 4 coats!
That’s AWESOME!
Thank you 🙂
This is such a good idea! When I finally work up the nerve to watermarble, I’m going to try this!
Awesome! I think it’s a cool way to change it up!
This is really amazing! I never thought It was possible.
I know! The clear polish really changes up the results, right! 🙂
I’ve been wanting to try this but just can’t get hyped about it cuz I haaaaaaate watermarbling! This looks so awesome though so I’m thinking about giving it a go now. Maybe. ;p Awesome job tho, seriously this looks super cool!
I hear ya- water marbling can be a big PITA! I usually have to re-do the swirly like 3 or 4 times before i get a good one.
Oof yep sounds like me. Only I guess I have less patience w it. I can be patient w a classroom of 30 5 year olds but watermarbling makes me wanna throw something. ;p
i have noticed tutorials on this and have yet to try it out. thanks for letting me see it done by someone I know and how the results look
That’s cool, thanks! Ya know, I originally thought I made up the idea of marbling with clear polish.. until I googled it and realized it was already a thing. Oh well! lol
you may or may not know this, but i HATE water marbling. but after this i just might have to try. ahh
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