how to marble your nails

Water marbling your nails can be beautiful, but it is somewhat tricky.
After a few successful attempts I have put together the following diagram: 

materials: cup of water, toothpick, q-tip, Vaseline, 3(more or less) nail polishes, paper towels   

Put some Vaseline around one of your nails and on the finger up to the 2nd joint, but make sure that none gets on your nail or the polish will not stick to it.

Drip polish quickly onto the water alternating colors until there is a good amount floating on the surface.

Using the toothpick, quickly drag through the polish until desired design occurs.

Take the Vaseline finger with the nail pointed parallel to the polish surface dip it straight down onto an area you like.  

Keep your finger in the water and under the polish surface.

Take the toothpick and clean the excess polish off the surface of the water. You may need to wait a moment for it to dry before it pulls easily off of the water.

Take your finger out and carefully clean polish off of the area surrounding the nail.  The polish should slide right off if there was enough Vaseline covering your skin.
Repeat.

A photo of my nails.  I used a white base coat, baby blue, navy blue, and silvery purple for the marbling, and added some sparkles with a toothpick.

easy and elegant

base coat baby blue, swipe of silver, swipe of white, dot a rhinestone, top coat, done :)

how to quickly pick a color

It used to take me a long time to figure out which color I wanted to paint my nails, as I would just dig through the box pulling out bottles, putting them back trying to find the perfect shade.  But then I ordered these nail tester wheels really cheaply from China and it has made my selection process a lot faster.  I can also use them to test out patterns and combinations. I wrote the names of the colors on the back of the wheels.

The following images are not great but you get the idea, a great way to quickly go through your colors before painting.  

Crackle Polish

Crackle polishes have become so popular lately, so I decided to experiment with Sally Hansen crackle in 'Ink Splatter'.  It was really cool to watch the polish crack as it was drying, but you do have to make sure that you put an even consistency and amount on each nail so that the crackling is all the same size. A thinner layer makes smaller cracks, and a thicker layer makes larger cracks.


I decided to put the black over a variety of different colors and was really happy with the results :)

I have also found that OPI 'White Shatter' is really pretty also and looks wintry when you put it over silvers, reds and greens.  

Here it is over a red polish for a peppermint effect. 

how to paint your nails