Crystals and Marble

Tonight’s practice, is more gems and more marbling.

For the gems I used some of the pre-painted tips I have from Temu. I’ve been thinking that the gems I have are too small, but actually, they aren’t. I need to downsize my awareness of size. The small ones are much better and are more proportional with nail size.

I’m even going for bigger caviar beads than I need to, so will keep practicing. The top left and centre are followed from the tutorial sheet, and the top right is more free wheeled – just trying to use up some of the gems and caviar beads I already had out.

I have an octagonal shaped storage pot and I found some lovely AB / crystal crystals – and when I looked a bit more closely realised that these were all different sized. So this section is going to come in really handy. Combined with some of the other coloured ones to add a bit interest to the designs.

For the marbling I used the Guibofu colours I had to hand. 054, 084 and 062 – a light pink, a light blue and a light purple.

For this technique I painted 2 thin coats of the base colour, then added another layer which I left wet, added the colour and moved the colours around on the tip to create the marble design. Maybe I should look at the inspo pics as I’m doing this to get a better idea of how it should look.

On the bottom left I used the light pink back and marbled in the light blue. I like how this turned out – but I don’t like how thick it ended up.

For the bottom row centre nail I used less product to try and ensure a thinner finished nail. I used the purple for the base and marbled in light pink, Lecente white and Lecente gold (Puddin). I like this one, and it’s a lot less bulky. This one reminds me of Jupiter.

For the bottom right, I think I used the light blue for the base and marbled in pink, white, purple and the gold. I tried to keep it thin, but think this is thicker than the centre nail, but not quite as thick as the left hand nail.

There are other marbling techniques to try so will keep practicing at this one. Some of the marble designs I see are so lovely, it’s worth practising and getting this to a higher standard.

Terri Copeland – a Magpie educator – does some amazing marbling techniques. She did offer pre-recorded training, and it’s probably worth checking out Clawgasmic to see what Chan has to offer. There are some really good examples on the inspo page – I love the beach and geode effects so it would be worth having a go at these I think, before moving on to something else.

Tomorrow is February – so the year is already flying by.