Being too impatient to wait for nail polish to dry and incapable of using my left hand to paint my right hand, I tend to hate doing my own nails. I decided to take a stab at water marble nails and am surprised by how easy it was to do.

There are plenty of marble nail tutorials, even dry marbling (no water). I prefer the water technique, while it might be awkward getting used to water, it pretty much eliminates drying time. [There are cold water nail drying techniques, I don't like them though.] Water marbling also removes the need to actually paint the polish on your nails. ..SWEET!

Tools:

1. Nail polish (I used  Sally Hansen “Complete Salon Manicure” for both colors)
2. Toothpick
3. Water
4. Nail polish remover
5. (Optional) Tape

With so many tips showing you how to do water marble, I decided to touch a bit on any problems you might run into. These are things you’ll want to know before you get started.

Tips:

1. Choosing a nail polish. It isn’t quite as simple as choosing colors. Play with the types of polishes till you find the polishes that spread in the water. Or watch tutorials with colors you like, to see what polishes they are using.
2. It’s more like toothpickS. When you use the toothpick to remove the remaining polish from the water, unless you get the polish off, you can’t use that toothpick again to create a design. The plastic toothpicks I used, made wiping the polish off easy. I don’t imagine it would be the same for regular wooden ones.
3. Temperature. If the water is too cold, it will dry the polish out before you can finish, or even begin your design. Aim for room temperature.
4. The container is going to get polish on it. You have to use something you’re ok with potentially ruining or that is disposable. I used a plastic cup.

Here’s a video with more marbling tips.

My list of polishes used may actually be a bit misleading. I always use gel polish, and may mix in regular polish. Once I finished marbling I topped with Gelish, Light Elegance then finished with the Gelish top coat.

Do you have any other tips for marble nails?