Today I have a mani from a couple months ago to show you (trying to finish up with my backlog of posts before starting on all the more recent swatches I have!), as well as a fail from the mani that directly preceded it!
The blue is Milani Golden Sea, an older shade, and the metallic/shimmery pastel green on my ring and pinkie is Zoya Dillon from last year’s spring collection. These first two photos are in sunlight taken with my phone.
Golden Sea has a metallic turquoise blue base with some gold shimmer and sparse, hard-to-tell-they’re-holo holo particles. I didn’t even realize that’s what they were until I did the water marble fail I’ll show at the end of the post, and saw them under the halogen light on the very thin film of polish. So, I wouldn’t call it a holo polish but it actually does have these tiny (smooth and flat, non-glitter) sparse holo particles! As always you can click on any photo to get a larger version; I think the particles show best in either the halogen shot below or the first sunlight ones…
In the shade:
Under halogen light:
With flash:
And here is my first ever attempt at water marbling, which did not work at all! It was really cold in the apartment a couple months ago when I tried it; that was probably my first mistake! The polishes dried on the cold water before I could do any marbling. The polishes I used were the two from the mani above plus Zoya Piaf, the shimmery yellow that was also my base polish. The first marble attempt is the one on my ring finger, where the polishes spread out super thin and dried that way. That’s where I saw that the particles in Golden Sea were actually holo. I kind of liked the effect even though I didn’t get to do any marbling, so I tried for another finger, the index, but for that attempt the polishes barely spread out at all so I got this ridiculously thick mess! It doesn’t show that well in the photo, since the angle is pretty much head-on, but it was like a big, thick, lumpy decal that I decided to just put on my nail anyway, haha! Planning to try water marbling again some time, now that the weather is warmer!
Vegan Claws 
Comments on: "Milani Golden Sea, Zoya Dillon, and a failed watermarble attempt" (9)
At least you tried. The polish color is very pretty.
Yep, at least I tried! 🙂
those colors are so pretty!!
Thank you!
Ugh, watermarbles – damn them all to hell. My first one was a total nightmare. Things have gotten better, but cleanup is still a pain in the butt!
Have you tried any of those liquid latex products? I just got one (from Eat Sleep Polish) and definitely plan to use it when I try again! This time I used scotch tape, not that I really ended up with much on it considering the polish was already basically dry lol.
I haven’t, mostly because I don’t watermarble or get messily gradient with it too often. I really try to polish cleanly the first time around so I don’t have to do 20 minutes’ worth of cleanup. Does the latex stuff work well? It might be worth picking up a little pot of the stuff just to try it, because for the two watermarbles I do a year, I just HATE cleaning them up. It dries everything out and makes the skin on your hands (my hands) look terrible. Nail problems!
Sorry for taking so long to reply! Wp app kept crashing on me and then I forgot once I was on my laptop. Finally updated the app and it seems to be working better so far, fingers crossed…
I have tried it a couple times for stamping, not sure that I’ve gotten the hang of it yet, it was thinner than I expected so the first time I had trouble peeling it off in one piece. So now I’m trying laying it on thicker. Seems to work well for the full-nail stamping design I tried (on one nail lol) today. The one I got is from Eat Sleep Polish and comes in a mini size which is what I got to try it out, since like you I wasn’t really sure if I’d use it much. When I do gradients I don’t usually get that messy either, I just paint on a small area of the sponge and there isn’t too much to clean up. But with my plan to attempt watermarbling again I thought why not try out a mini. And like I said it did help have less to clean up when I did that full nail stamp today!
Coolio. I’m going to check it out.
Also, watermarble, stamping…I hate you all!