how to: spend 6 hours on your nails

tired of the same ol' thing on the tv?
eyes too strained to enjoy the company of a good book or even a magazine?
have many hours to spend but nothing to do and nowhere to go?

well do i ever have the solution for you!

last night i found myself in this very situation.
a girl can only watch so many crime shows while staying in a hotel room ya know, so it was time to turn the tv off for a night.
looking at  my royal blue nails i had a flash of inspiration; during my days using stumble upon, i had come across an idea for nail art that seemed like i would never have the time to fiddle with. well! as luck would have it, i did have time to fiddle with it!

enter water marble for nails.
as seen here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/18BZdL/heynicenails.com/post/2766491113
this technique looks beautiful, but also seems like the type of thing that could not only be messy, but extraordinarily frustrating.

despite my reservations on the project, last night i decided to attempt the technique.

step 1: gather your materials

for this i gathered the only nail polishes that i have on the road with me me. classic, excellent essie to the rescue again.

so for these nails, you need a base coat. i went with the blue because i was already wearing it.

logic.

you also need a cup with room temperature water, a stir stick or tooth pick and if youre not in a hotel room, i would say tape or something to go around your nails so you dont waste a bottle of nail polish remover like i did cleaning up... but we will get to that later.

step 2: drop nail polish into water, swirl with stir stick/tooth pick to create a pattern

this is the nail polish in the cup pre-swirl. but this is the first step of the process anyways!
here is the problem with this step while travelling: i was dumb.
i used one of the hotels glasses instead of the paper ones they provide for coffee... thus ruining and subsequently hiding all evidence of said glass cup.
i eventually used the paper one, also ripped it in half to make it easier, which it did because....

step 3: dip your fingers
in a slight angle you have to set your fingers in the design that you most like in your swirl of polish. you have to do this pretty quickly because the polish water becomes a film that just causes a big mess.
and so this is the part where having tape around your nail would be ideal because my hands ended up looking a little something like this:

so it looks neat for sure.
but omg is it messy!
though clean up and everything i ended up having to redo so many of these by nicking the nail with polish remover. on top of everything else, it is so hard to get nail polish of of your hands!
and can you believe at this point, this is what success looked like.

step 4: reevaluate.
you've come this far.
you re not happy with the results.
do you leave it? move on? fully aware of the time and tears that's gone into this only for a sub par set of nails?
NO!
you re-do what needs to be redone.

i even came up with a quick fix - before the nail polish is dry after the dip, take a damp tissue and get rid of the excess nail polish! it makes clean up with straight up removed better.
i tried fiddling with different techniques and patterns and in the end, as a first attempt, it was worth it.

step 5: enjoy the mess
yes. you will make a mess.
this is a piece of art, not a project!
there is a reason they call this trend "nail art"
after literally 6 hours of trying this, here is my space:

and finally...

step 6: basque.

enjoy the fruits of your labour, even if its not the prettiest, enjoy that you spent time on yourself with just yourself... or a friend. but you took time to just do something for you.

here is what my end results look like:

the edges are rough and it needs some cleaning up around the sides, but all in all i would call this attempt a success.

so upon reflection:

would i do this again? probably not. it took a lot of time and a lot of nail polish and a lot of nail polish remover.

that being said, it might be better when i have all of the necessary materials at hand and now that i have a better idea of what it is like it might move faster.

i would also do this in a ventilated room.

or in a room with a window.

i might have killed some brain cells working on this project and am in desperate need to get out and have some fresh air in my lungs.

i did enjoy having some me time, and if even one stranger compliments the end result, i will feel validated.

good luck with your DIY if you choose to turn your nails into a piece of art too.