My First Water Marble!

I am SO excited about this post! Having seen the truly gorgeous water marbled nails out there, I've wanted to be able to do this for so long. I've tried multiple times previously, and just ended up with a huge gloopy mess of revoltingness. I'd given up. Then today I found this wonderful post at Lacquerish, and I felt all inspired to try again. In particular, she pointed out some common errors, most of which I'd been doing!  I tried again, and hey presto!

I started with a base of Barry M Coconut, and then got to work.  I used Mushroom, and 3 Gellys - Paprika, Cocoa and Lychee - to get this look.

While is hasn't come out perfectly (there are a couple of bubbles, and I caught my little finger nail with the tip of the cocktail stick), I'm thrilled with how this came out. It worked exactly as the tutorials say it should! Like magic!

My cleanup on this isn't the best, but I'm not hugely bothered, as I'm so chuffed with my results. The bits round the edges will neaten up after I've washed my hands and used hand cream a few times, and had a night's sleep, so they'll be looking better tomorrow morning. 

On the cleanup note - I do NOT recommend PVA basecoat as a shield on your fingers! I did most of my fingers using a good dollop of handcream as a barrier to stop mess, and it worked well. Then I wondered about PVA peel off glitter basecoat and tried that on the last couple. Oh dear oh dear! Not a good plan. Very messy. I suppose it's because it's water-based, so doesn't go well with dipping in water!

Another happy thing about today - the sun was out!  And it was out long enough to take some photos outside! It's starting to just about feel as though spring might be on the way one day!