Water Marbling Made Easy

Today's post is all about making water marble decals. This is an awesome water marbling technique that I recently learned about. It's mentioned on a number of other blogs, and there are even some great YouTube videos about it, but I just wanted to share my experience with the technique here.

I've always wanted to try water-marbling, but prior to finding out about this method, I had only seen it done the traditional way - and that method seemed like so much trouble! Basically, several drops of nail polish are dropped into a container to form a bullseye pattern, a design is drawn into the rings of the bullseye using a pointed object, the nails are dunked into the wet design, and the excess polish is gathered from the surface and discarded before the nails are removed. 

Although this method produces very beautiful multi-coloured patterns, I was discouraged from trying it due to the large amount of wasted polish, and the huge mess created by dunking your hand into wet polish (you can tape off your fingers, or use liquid latex - but still...). The water marble decal technique starts out the exact same as the regular method, except instead of dunking your fingers, you allow the polish to harden on the surface of the water, and then lift out the water marble decal, and lay it on some paper towel to dry until you are ready to use it. When you are ready, you can then cut the decal into nail sized sections, and attach them to your manicure using topcoat!

For me, this method is such an improvement. It greatly reduces the waste factor since you have more control over which sections, and how much of the pattern you use. Also, it's way less messy because there's no dipping - just cutting and pasting! You also have more control as to exactly what you use on the nail, and where you put it. The only drawback I've noticed is that you have to be really careful when lifting the hardened decal from the water. You want to avoid ripping the decal, or having the decal fold over onto itself. I just used my fingers, but I find it helps to grasp it by at least two separate points, so you have a little more control. I've had a pretty high success rate this way, with only a few partially ruined decals.

Decals Galore!!!

Polishes Used:
NYC 'Times Square'
NYC 'Spring Street'
NYC 'Lexington Yellow'
NYC 'High Line Green'
NYC 'NY Blues'
NYC 'Water Street Blue'
NYC 'Prince Street'
NYC 'Lincoln Square Lavender'
NYC 'Lafayette Pink'
NYC 'Sidewalkers'


Another tip is that I chose to use inexpensive polishes that come in bright, fun colours. The line of polishes that I used retails for approximately a dollar to a dollar fifty at discount department stores, and I had a complete rainbow of colours in my collection. Even though there is less waste than with traditional water marbling, there is still some waste, so I just feel more comfortable using my cheaper stuff.

Another reason for this is that it's super fun to do, so you may find that once you start, you may keep going until you have a bunch of decals.  When I had finished playing, the fill line of my previously unused polishes had gone down by about an eight of an inch! Now that is not really all that much polish in the grand scheme of things, especially considering the large amount of decals that I made, however it's not every day that you use that much polish in one sitting!

Below I have a brief pictorial tutorial to show the steps in the process (sorry for the lack of continuity - I never snapped pictures of a single decal all the way through the steps, so each shot features a random decal!):

On a final note, I just wanted to mention that this is my 100th post! I'm so excited to have reached this milestone. Thanks for stopping by!