Rainbow Wings and Petals - Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat, Australis, Revlon, China Glaze, Mode, Essence, Color Club

It was Mardi Gras around here, with lots of partying on the streets, so I decided to go for rainbow colours on my nails, achieved through dry marbling on the silicone nail art mat!

[Dragon wings on one hand...]

[...flowers on the other.]

When it comes to dry marbling, I don't mean that I did water marbling with nail polish on the surface of a pool of water and then transferred onto a plastic surface to be applied later. In this case, I directly applied nail polish on the silicone nail art mat, and used a toothpick to quickly draw through the streaks of colour to create the effects you usually get from water marbling.

You can see the result of my dry marbling in the picture below. There are two tiny flowers I did for experimentation too.

[Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Here are some tips for dry marbling on a mat:

1. Experiment, experiment, experiment!
2. Apply two to three thick coats of nail polish on the silicone mat.
3. Don't use thin coats or quickdry nail polish or old nail polish that is naturally drying out. You need the nail polish thick and wet enough to work with.
4. The watery nail polish worked best for me but required more layers.
5. If you want an effect that closely resembles water marbling, curve the nail polish streaks you're painting down. If you look on the left of the mat, most of the streaks are straight. But towards the right of the mat, you can see that I have started curving my nail polish streaks. It's to create the familiar water marbling flower look.
6. Leave your nail polish to dry on your silicone nail art mat for a couple hours at least. At first, the nail polish will look very thick on the mat. But as it dries out, the nail polish flattens to the silicone mat. It also becomes very easy to peel off the mat.
7. Paint your base coat before applying the newly made dry marbling patterns onto your nails. If you press firmly on the edges of your nail bed, you can peel off the excess nail polish easily.

That's all I can think of for the moment!

[Dry marbling: Australis Mexican Madness, Revlon Mad About Mango,
China Glaze Yell-O-Neil, Mode Hook Me UP, Essence Choose Me!, Color Club Eternal Beauty]

Let's run through the nail polishes I used to get this colourful effects. The nail polishes are:

1. Australis Mexican Madness - Pink creme
2. Revlon Mad About Mango - Salmon pink creme
3. China Glaze Yell-O-Neil - Yellow creme with gold shimmer
4. Mode Hook Me Up - Light blue creme 
5. Essence Choose Me! - Blue-green-gold shimmer
6. Color Club Eternal Beauty - Purple holo

The same nail polishes were used on both hands, except the marbling is different, that's all.

[Dry marbling: Australis Mexican Madness, Revlon Mad About Mango,
China Glaze Yell-O-Neil, Mode Hook Me UP, Essence Choose Me!, Color Club Eternal Beauty]

I noticed that the marbling is a lot smaller compared to actual water marbling. That probably just depends on the individual doing the dry marbling and how far apart you want the lines on your pattern.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the results. I always thought water marbling was too messy for me after I tried it out a couple of times. But doing this on a silicone mat? Thumbs up from me! I don't think I need to go into detail about techniques since there are so many videos of water marbling. The same-ish theory applies, only you don't use a bowl of water.

I'm pretty delighted with what can be done with a silicone mat and I'm looking forward to trying it out even more.