Water Marbled Nails!

I have the Glee version of Iz's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" stuck in my head... Gee, I wonder why, eh Alfonso? (we listened to it a few times tonight after we finished ballroom dance practice)
ANYWAY!:
Water marbling! Woohoo! Messy, time consuming, tricky, unpredictable, temperamental, and requires a lot of patience and practice.
Yes, this is water marbling, readers.

Have some pictures:


















































(top:) Hippy nails, it's a bit hard to see the water marbling because of the peace signs, but you get the picture.
(middle:) The best example of water marbling. Random, colorful, and each nail is unique.
(bottom:) My Del Sol version of water marbling... I never got a chance to get a picture of it in the sun. *sad face* So you have to deal with the "nude" version.
[click on the pictures to enlarge them]

So how does one "water marble"? It's actually a simple idea, it just doesn't come off that way. Here's a tutorial. It's low-quality, but it's very clean on what to do, and it was the one I learned from: Simple Water Marbling
Once you have regular marbling down, you can move on to more elaborate stuff like this one: Fancy-Shmancy Water Marbling
I still can't pull off the latter. It's very hard to do this look... At least for me. Here's the tips I can give you:
1: As the video says make sure your water is lukewarm! Cold water sets the nail polish quickly, then you just wasted a bunch of nail polish, and that sucks.
2: Use common sense- Don't use a drinking glass or anything for this. The nail polish touches the rim of whatever is holding the water, so unless you want to be removing polish from the edge of your cup, just use something disposable. I cut the bottom off of a water bottle and use that.
3: The smaller your cup, the less nail polish you will have to use. This requires a lot of nail polish as you can see from tutorial #2, so don't make yourself use more than you need. Use a smaller cup so the nail polish can't spread out as far, making you need less.
4: Work quickly!!!! The nail polish around the edges can set pretty quickly depending on the room temperature and the water temperature. Drip your polishes as quickly as possible.
5: Pick thinner polishes so that the polish will drip faster.
6: Avoid sheer nail polishes, when they hit the water, they will hardly show up at all on your nail. Pick highly pigmented ones, but make sure that the polish isn't too dense, or the drip of polish will sink straight to the bottom of your cup. Lame.
7: Paint your nail a base color, in case the water marbling doesn't get all over the nail, 'cause you can't patch water marbling. I prefer to paint my nail white before I marble, then the colors show up better anyway.
8: Be patient. This will not go off smoothly every time.
9: Take into account the room temperature around you and the water temperature. The colder it is, the sooner the nail polish will set. And that sucks. I've had to remove the whole drip series because it set before I couldn't put a design in it fast enough and get my nail in there... There are some days where I simply can't do water marbling because the surrounding temperature in the room was too cool.
10: Don't try for perfection. It's not gonna happen. There will most likely be some bubbling, or some nail polish may overlap on itself when you're pulling your finger out of the water and make a gross mess, but you can either deal with it, or take it off and do that nail all over again.
11: Remember to pull the excess polish away from your nail before pulling it out of the water. The excess polish might catch on the nail on it's way out of the water, then messing up your initial design.
12: Have fun with it and try new things.
13: Keep a paper towel nearby to clean off your pin that you use to swirl your nail polish. Polish gets caught on there really easily.
14: Don't forget to clean out the excess nail polish out of your cup after each nail you marble. It's usually set by now anyway. Just take your safety pin and swirl it in the nail polish until all of it has stuck to the pin, then just wipe the polish off.
15: Give your nails time to dry. Sometimes it takes longer for your polish to dry when you water marble. Remember to shake off the water from your finger.
16: Pick very different shades of colors. My favorite combo is dark blue and neon green. I might try my most favorite color combo ever (neon green and black) sometime. I haven't tried it yet, but that may be the next option.


Well, those are all the tips I can come up with at the moment... I'll add to the list if I think of more. Just remember to be patient. I still can't do this look easily. I only do it like, once every 4 months or so. It uses a lot of nail polish, so don't use your nail polish that is running out or limited edition or something unless you're willing to sacrifice a lot of polish for a temporary look. With proper care, I'm sure this could last a while, but I change my nails once a week, so I'm not going for long-lasting... But anyway, have fun, enjoy the experience, practice it, be patient, and look at more tutorials if the ones I put up aren't clear enough. There's oodles on youtube.
As always, if you try the look, take a picture and send me a link, 'cause I wanna see! And don't hesitate to ask any questions, just check back in a few days to see if I've responded to you.

Now... I need to get to bed. I'm looking at less than 4 hours of sleep now. I have church in the morning... I knew I should have started a post on Water Marbling right before bed time. I should have been asleep 40 minutes ago... But that's okay! I'm sacrificing my sleep for you guys (you'd better appreciate it...), and I'm getting donuts tomorrow! Yaaayyy!! :D
Good morning! *falls over and passes out* ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZz...

Blended colors!

"Hello. Salute. It's me. Your duke. And I made something that's real to show you how I feel. Hello, Hello. It's me, Picasso, I will paint my words of love with your name on every wall...When you leave, my colors fade to grey. Little lover stay, all my colors fade away. Every word of love I used to say, Now I paint it every day... Mya-hee, Mya-hoo, Mya-ha, Mya-ha-ha!..."


*ahem* I like that song... Dragostea Din Tei in english... ANYWAY!... Speaking of fading colors, on to the topic of the day! Blended colors!
As those of you from DeviantArt know, this is my most recent blended look. I did this last week, and it seemed pretty popular.








But I also did this look a few months ago, and it was by far the most popular look I've done. People loved it... And a couple were bummed when I took it off to do a different look.
(click on photos for full size.)





So anyway, how do you do it? I got that question a few times, and it's hard to describe exactly how to do it other than showing the video I found on how to do it, found here: Jolleh8D's nail polish blending tutorial
No, I did not come up with the idea alone, someone else did, and I just used the tutorial they made to create a very popular look. All I can offer are tips and tricks to make the process easier for newbies:
1: Use a nail polish that is sheer enough to allow the color it overlaps on to show through, but make sure that the polish isn't so sheer that it doesn't alter the color it's fading into, 'cause then it takes forever to get it to work and usually requires a million coats, earning you a very long drying time.
2: Fade two similar colors together, it makes it easier. I tried to fade green into pink and ended up with an embarrassing and ugly mess that I won't post on here. You can find it on my DA account.
3: Cremes are harder to fade because of their opacity. If you want to use cremes, you need to actually mix the colors together where they meet, so be willing to work for it.
4: Texture is important as well. If the polishes are a different texture, it will be more difficult to blend it, but could also yield awesome results if it works out.

So there you have some tips and advice to hopefully make your blending experience go smoothly. I find that Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear nail polish is awesome for blending. It's a good consistency for blending, and there is a wide variety of colors to choose from.
Here's some options that you could try using this technique:
*Try doing it in different directions. Horizontal, diagonal, vertical...
*Try fading different shades of the same color.
*Try fading different colors on each nail.
*Try doing a faded french manicure by fading nail polish on the tips of your nails, then shaping it into a french manicure by using a nail polish remover-soaked Q-tip to remove any excess and shape it just how you want it.
*Add a cool topcoat to add some extra pizazz. Try a tinted topcoat, glitter, a mattifying topcoat, or glow in the dark nail polish. I also have blacklight reactive nail polish that I would like to use sometime... But I'm not quite the rave/clubbing type, haha. I'll have to go to an arcade or Killer Pizza From Mars sometime.
*Try doing a Yin/Yang design with a solid color on one side, and faded colors on the other.
*Add in black as an accent color to your faded colors design.


So get to it, dear readers! Send me a link to a picture of your design in the comment section if you attempt it, and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about something I didn't cover or wasn't clear on anything. I'll add a comment answering your question as soon as I can, so check back to see if I responded to your comment!