Guilty Pleasures - 37 Color Water Marble

Yeah, I wore 37 colors at once.  Let me explain...

I am part of a monthly Bunco group, and this month it was my turn to host.  My theme was "guilty pleasures," so we had scorecards with things like Jake Gyllenhaal, fried chicken, Britney Spears CDs and fruity cocktails on them.  We had Cheetos and some delicious cupcakes and mini corn dogs.  We had a REALLY delicious cocktail with marshmallow vodka, creme de cacoa and cream soda.  While I was thinking about MY guilty pleasures, of COURSE nail polish came to mind immediately.  So it got me thinking... how many different colors could I wear at once, and how would I put them on?

I thought about a patchwork mani, but I eventually settled on a water marble.  With experimenting with colors, it took me a couple of hours to finish this, but it was worth it - people loved it!

I had several turn out the way I've wanted my others to turn out.  I used distilled water this time and it seemed to help with getting the polishes to spread much more than I've ever gotten them to do before.  I was surprised how much I like the glitter nail and that China Glaze Riveting turned coral, and it was fun getting to know which of my polishes work best and ideas for new color combos.

 

 

The colors I used, from left to right:

 

Pinkie: Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Bronze Pink, Revlon Matte Ruby Ribbon, OPI I'm Suzi & I'm a Chocoholic, Sinful Colors Bare
Ring: CoverGirl Nailslicks Starry Blue, Revlon Color Illusion Purple Twilight, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Rock-a-bye, Revlon Perfectly Plum, CoverGirl Nailslicks Wild Plum
Middle: Ulta High Roller, Pure Ice Silver Mercedes, China Glaze Swing Baby, Pure Ice Iced Copper
Pointer: Pure Ice Splash, Sally Hansen HD DVD, Sinful Colors Cinderella, Pure Ice All Night Long, Ulta Bam-blue-zled
Thumb: LA Colors White, OPI Skull & Glossbones, Sinful Colors Black on Black

Thumb: Revlon Double Truffle, OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know, Wet N Wild Cocoa Shimma (This one turned out pretty crappy, so no close up shot)
Pointer: Sinful Colors Bare, Sally Hansen HD Byte, Pure Ice Super Star, Zoya Jacy
Middle: Pure Ice Oh Baby!, Sinful Colors Frenzy, Ulta After Party, Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
Ring: Sally Hansen HD Resolution, Ulta Limelight, OPI Jade is the New Black, Ulta Jaded, Piggy Polish Envy
Pinkie: China Glaze Riveting, Ulta High Roller

Blue Water Marble

I recently did my second water marble, and I tried out some blues!  This time I got some distilled water to use instead of the bottled water, and I felt like it made a huge difference with getting the polishes to spread better.  I have had a lot of trouble getting those nice loopy shapes that show up in most water marbles, and I had a better time this time.  Here it is!

 

My thumbs turned out two of my favorites, nice loopies!  But I still wasn't getting as many rings of color as I would have liked, so the sections of color are thicker than I would have liked.

For the base, I used Ulta Bam-blue-zled. The colors I used for the marble were Bam-blue-zled, Pure Ice Oh, Baby!, Pure Ice All Night Long, Ulta Dance Teal Dawn, and Ulta Alter Ego.

Water Marble!

I started seeing water marble posts on Pinterest a few months ago, and from the first time I saw it, I KNEW it was something I wanted to try. This week, I finally got around to trying it for the first time!

It turned out amazing! I had to revise my color choices a bit because some polishes work better than others (if you do a Google search you'll find different people's opinions of which work best). I had just bought Zoya Megan, a sort of purply light grey, so I used that as my base.

It took a few minutes of experimenting to figure out how to drop the polish into the water and how to use the toothpicks to create designs. Once I figure it out though, it only took maybe 30 minutes to do all my nails. Not bad at all! My designs are not as uniform as a lot of the water marbles I see, but I think I like it this way, a bit organic.

As you can see, I also finally got a bottle of Seche Vite - for some reason I hadn't checked at Sally Beauty Supply or Ed Wyse. I went to Ed Wyse for the first time and they have about a billion colors of OPI and Zoya, so I'll definitely be going back there! It is amazing, it dries and sets the polish so quickly!

Here's a crappy cell photo of how the designs turned out my right hand.

If you're interested in water marbling, I would highly recommend the following sources for tips.  I would not have been able to do this without seeing photo tutorials and video of how it's done.

Water Marble Picture Tutorial at Chloe's Nails (LOVE this blog!)
Water Marble Tutorial at Hey, Nice Nails!
Valentine's Day Water Marble by SimpleLittlePleasures on YouTube

The colors I used for this manicure were:
Zoya Megan (base)
China Glaze Swing Baby
Sinful Colors Bare
Essie Sew Psyched
OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know