Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Waterless Water Marble


Hi guys! As you may know I’ve been doin quite a bit with acrylic paints lately. You may remember the zombie nails I did for Halloween where I mixed the paint for the background.  I’ve mixed paints for a couple of other things as well such as the pink ribbons for my Breast Cancer Awareness mani. Well when I was mixing the paints I happened to notice that it actually takes a good bit of mixing before the colors really come together which brings me to this mani. I also noticed how it kind of looked like marbling. 


How many have trouble with water marble manis? I mean, really, its pretty tricky to get the hang of. And then you add in all the little annoyances such as tape or bubbles, trying to get the design right and not being able to get it or the polish drying too quick. Seriously, unless you’re Colette from My Simple Little Pleasures (who actually really inspired me in the nail art ways) water marble can be super hard and super frustrating! I am, if nothing else, lazy and a huge fan of the easy way lol. 

So here we go!
What you’ll need:
Acrylic Paints in whatever colors your heart desires

Something non-porous to put the paint (I’d recommend either paper or something flat and plastic)

A paint brush if you’d like (doesn’t matter what size, shape or type)

How to do it:

Step one: Pick the colors you like. For this I used  Too Blue, Purple Iris, New Shamrock and Magenta Brilliant. All by Apple Barrel, all 57 cents at my local WalMart store. What cheaper and easier? Yeah I’m down for that lol.
Step two: Drop dollops of color onto your paper or plastic or whatever the heck you are using. I did purple on the bottom and randomly dropped the other three on top. Swirl around til you are happy with how it looks. Don’t swirl too much! 

Step three: Just like water marbling, you will dip your finger nail down into the paint. Don’t worry about taping, or trying vaseline or anything else. It’s easy to clean off. If you don’t like it just dip again! That easy, really. You can also add paint to the nail with the brush though its more of a muted effect (see middle finger). 


Step four: Let it dry. Now this isn’t polish. It doesn’t take forever and a half to dry. The paint does dry matte but you can change that if you would like.

Step five: Topcoat the hell out of it. Seriously. Wrap your tips like crazy and make sure all the paint is covered by topcoat as acrylic paint will come off with water. 

Step six: Clean up! I left the paint on in most of these pics just so you see how messy it is. Don’t avoid it, enjoy it. Let it remind you of fingerpainting as a kid lol. Really once your top coat is dry just go wash your hands with soap and water makin sure to rub the paint. It comes right off (it took me about 2 minutes max to get all the paint off that I didn’t top coat over).


Do you remember back to my Try It On Tuesday water marble? That took hours and I still wasn’t happy with it. This took less than 10 minutes to do. It’s cheaper, acrylic paint goes a long way. It’s easier than tryin to hurry, hurry, hurry before the polish dries.Oh yeah, it’s a lot more fun! 

A few things to note:
Miss a spot when dipping but don’t want to dip again? Use the brush and just add a tiny little bit. Blend or not it’s up to you. 
You can also use the brush to put the paint directly on your nails, you just don’t get all the swirly effects vibrantly.
Acrylic paint is less durable on your nails than polish, topcoat is very important! I type all day and I do have a little tip wear and a few chips from where I didn’t wrap my tips as well as I should have.
Its not all super thick like polish is and it all lays flat. A huge plus for me!

So what do you guys think? Will you try it? 

Here are all the pics:
Left thumb my favorite nail




Left ring finger my third favorite nail


Middle right, my second favorite nail



They are a lot more vibrant in real life, for some reason my camera doesn't like this mani lol. Let me know what you think in the comments! 
As always, thanks for stopping by :)

4 comments:

  1. Wow! Can't wait to try this - you may have just saved me a ton of frustration! I can usually get two good nails on a hand with trad water marbling but I'm usually so angry by that point that I want to throw everything across the room :/ Heading out for acrylics tomorrow - thanks Lena :)

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    1. Ohhh I definitely hear you with all that frustration! I have seriously been tempted to throw it all across the room too. Acrylics are useful for other stuff besides this :) Make sure you stop by the Facebook page and let me know how it goes!

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  2. adding this to my list of things to try :)

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    1. Yay!!!! Let me know how it goes :) I want to try designs too but I've got a bunch of other stuff I want to do as well.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment :)