Bestie Nail Art Challenge - Week Five: Water Marble (Rainbow Honey Midnight Garden Cremes Water Marble Nail Art)

Holy. Moly. I am back from the dead. I was sick off work for an entire week last week, which was both nice and kind of crappy. It was nice because I was able to fully recover and honestly, it was a great break from social media. Made me realize some of the negative effects of Facebook! With that said, it also sucked because now I am SO behind. Behind here on Cthulhu, and just behind in work and everything in general. Ah well. Is what it is - I am still a bit sick but better enough to use a computer. So this is the FINAL week of the Bestie Nail Art Challenge with my NPBFF, Caitlin of Addicted to Lacquer. I don't know *WHY* I suggested this one, but I suggested the theme of "water marble", and Caitlin rightly put it at the end of the month. I also received my Rainbow Honey Midnight Garden collection so I tried to put two and two together and make a thing happen.



Make sure you head over to Caitlin over at Addicted to Lacquer for her water marble and general awesomeness. I can tell you right now she spent more time on her water marble as that was ONE NAIL AT A TIME. As for me, I went for a two cup operation (which actually ended up being three because I am awful but whatever):





I have only water marbled a couple of times before but I had a plastic cup that I've been using for them. I used a couple of toothpicks as well. Here's a list of the materials and polishes I used for this water marble nail art:

+ 1 plastic cup
+ 2 toothpicks
+ room temperature water
+ Rainbow Honey Charaxes (blue)
+ Rainbow Honey Cymbidium (pink)
+ Rainbow Honey Viola (purple)
+ Rainbow Tayabak (green)
+ OPI White Alpine (white base)
+ Seche Vite top coat





I started off with a white base - one coat of OPI White Alpine. I ended up dipping my index, middle and ring finger in one batch. I made another batch for my pinky and thumb but severely botched the pattern so just used it for my pinky rather than throwing away the whole thing, and then finally did one patch soley for my thumb. I know you're supposed to do something smart like use tape, or vaseline for your skin but I honestly had no issues with the clean up. I just made sure to use cuticle oil after so the acetone didn't dry out my hands. Here's the disaster before I cleaned it up:





After clean-up, with Seche Vite top coat:











One thing that's hard to avoid when you do a water marble is the dreaded BUBBLES. Ugh. I am not sure how to avoid them but I think it's related to how you dip your hand in - maybe if I did it more slowly? More fast? I'm not too sure. I just tried my best to be careful! Unfortunately I ended up having to "patch" things up so I used a small nail brush to try and hide it. It ended up a fail because the colour is so thin so it looks different from a layer straight out of a bottle on a brush. So then I tried to cover it up with Rainbow Honey Metalmark:







Overall, I am happy with my water marble. It's not the best and I have seen far better patterns out there, but I get so anxious over the polish drying up on the water before I dip my nail in, that I just do it as quickly as I can. It's also VERY polish heavy if you do a batch for each nail, so I also like doing two batch operations for that reason.

Anyway, that's the end of the Bestie Nail Art Challenge, I am kind of sad that it's over! I think Caitlin and I might plan to try another later this year. I also reshaped my nails. I don't know if I like them though. What nail shape do you like? Have you water marbled lately? Tell me your secrets for avoiding bubbles, I want some SCIENCE!