31dc2014 Day 20 - Water Marble

Let me start by saying that this is my favorite water marble EVER! I spent an absurd amount of time at my nail station doing a ton of trial runs and experiments but what I ended up with is awesome!

I love combining nail art techniques together. For instance, my water marble color block manicure. For today's prompt, I wanted to combine water marbling with yet another nail art technique; gradients! The idea was to marble with a clear nail polish to let the gradient peek through.

The gradient is done in Julep Katie and Julep India. I wish I had snapped a photo of the gradient because it was just stunning on its own. 

Now, here's where the experimentation came in. I needed a clear polish that would spread enough to marble with. Unfortunately, both of my clear top coats dried too fast to work. Then, I tried some clear glitter toppers. They didn't work either. I also tried matte top coats and that's when I found a clear winner! (See what I did there?!? Ha ha!) NYC Matte Me Crazy, it was! I marbled with that and Sally Hansen Black Out and it was wonderful! Hubby's response was, "That looks bad ass." Yay! I also played around a bit afterward...

This is with a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust because it perfectly masks any bubbling or slight imperfections in a water marble.

And this is with a coat of Julep's Matte Top Coat. I love all three stages of this design so very, very much.