Rio Marble Nail Art Polish: London Collection

Hello everyone! I know, I know… it’s been forever since I last posted on here, which truly makes me so sad because I love my blog so much… I just seem to have so little free time at the moment; if I’m not at work I’m either sleeping or seeing my Andy and the result is no time to blog or indeed paint my nails! I really want to get back into the habit of doing regular blog posts though so bear with me, I have some ideas to help me manage my time more effectively!

Rio Beauty were kind enough to send me a second kit to review, following my review of the Rio Beauty Lace Nail Foils. I of course JUMPED at the chance, I loved the Lace Nail Foils so I was very excited to try their water marbling kit. To be totally honest with you, I’ve never even attempted a water marble manicure before this kit, purely because I just knew I would make a mess of it!

And of course this makes the perfect second kit to feature in my Christmas Gift Guide 2012!

What you receive in the kit:

5 nail art polishes in colours red, orange, black, white and a green shimmer.
A ‘2-in-1 varnish’ (a basecoat & topcoat)
A bottle of acetone
A dotting tool
5 orange sticks
5 practice nails
A roll of micropore
A silicone marbling pot (which helpfully folds away to the much smaller pink pot you see above)
A DVD
An instruction leaflet
A leaflet showing many different design ideas

First, I watched the DVD, which was only short but demonstrated the technique very effectively. I found it to be very simple and very informative. The information wasn’t new but it was put across in such a way that it made sense to me and was easy to remember.

Next, I taped up my fingers as shown above, using the micropore tape included in the kit. I wanted to mention how much easier it is to use micropore than it is to use masking tape, which is rougher, much less flexible and just a lot harder to manipulate into the correct position for actually protecting your cuticles than micropore is. I also painted my nails with a coat of the white nail polish, to provide a blank canvas, as instructed in the DVD & leaflet.

Here was the fun part… I think my boyfriend Andy was even more excited about this than me! He did 2 practice nails, I did 2 and his mum did 1!

How to create the water marble:

1. First ensure you have taped up your nails as shown above, and paint one coat of a coloured polish of your choice. I found white worked best, as recommended, as it adds a vibrancy to the colours you use.

2. Fill the collapsible pink marbling pot (when it is unfolded!) with cold water, up to the final fold line.

3. Choose your colours: I found 3 was the optimum amount of colours to use, but you can use more or less if you like. Unscrew the caps of these colours and leave them sitting inside the neck of the bottle, so that you don’t have to unscrew them each time you use them.

4. From about 5mm from the surface of the water, drop one droplet of the first nail polish colour into the centre of the pot. Be careful not to have too much or too little polish on the brush, and don’t drop it from too high a height.

5. Repeat step 4, using different colours, dropping the droplets into the centre of the previous nail polish colour, until you have as many rings as you want.

6. Use the thin end of the dotting tool to pull out the polish to give you more room to work with.

7. Create a design using the thin end of the dotting tool. In the picture above I have pulled from the outside in, and pushed the nib of the tool into the centre to anchor the design. It is a good idea to wipe off the excess polish after each time you drag the tool through the polish, otherwise the build-up can spoil the design.

8. When you have a design you are happy with, leave it to dry on the water for about 10 seconds.

9. Next, slowly and gently submerge your nail into the part of the design you want to end up on your nail. You should end up with your finger being at roughly 90 degrees to the water, with your nail fully submerged.

10. While your nail is submerged, use a cotton wool bud (I found these worked better than the orange sticks) to collect the excess polish from the water before you remove your nail.

11. After about 15 seconds of your nail been submerged in the water, slowly remove your finger from the water. You will be left with a design on your nail and also probably on the micropore tape too.

12. Repeat the process with your remaining fingernails. I found it easiest to work one hand at a time, simply because the applying and removing of the tape is a lot trickier when you are using wet nails!

13. After leaving your nails to dry for about 10 minutes, you can carefully remove the micropore tape. Next, dip a cotton wool bud (or an orange stick with cotton wool wrapped around one end) into the acetone, and use this to clean up the excess polish around your cuticles.

14. Finish with a coat of topcoat. I find the 2-in-1 varnish becomes a bit gluey around my cuticles (you will see this in the photos – sorry!) so I would recommend using a normal topcoat to finish.

Here are some of the designs I created (please excuse any cuticle mess, bubbles or other imperfections, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt about water marbling, it’s that practice makes perfect!).

Created using the black, red and white polishes included in the kit.

Created using the green shimmer, orange and black polishes included in the kit.

Created using the green shimmer, orange, red, white and black polishes included in the kit.

Next I tried using ‘normal’ polishes, in order to test the Rio claim that you can’t use ordinary nail polish, as the polish included in the kit is of a thinner consistency and has a higher pigmentation than normal polishes. As you can see, the cremes worked fairly well, but glitters and shimmers weren’t so great…

Pinkie finger: Barielle Berry Blue, Barielle Swizzle Stix, Barry M Matt White, OPI You Only Live Twice. Ring finger: China Glaze Winter Holly, China Glaze I’m Not Lion, OPI You Only Live Twice. Middle finger: OPI You Only Live Twice, OPI The Spy Who Loved Me, Barry M Matt White. Index finger: Barielle Berry Blue, Barielle Swizzle Stix, Barry M Matt White.

I did find that all of my normal polishes dried a lot quicker on the water making it a lot harder to create designs in the polish. The glitter was a huge fail, it just broke off into chunks as I tried to create a design in it! However, because I know so many nail bloggers manage amazing water marbles with normal polishes, I do think it is possible to use normal polishes, if a little more tricky.

Problem solving:

Bubbles filled with water quite frequently appeared on my nails after removing them from the water, which, according to the instruction leaflet, is caused by placing your nail onto the design too quickly. If you do get bubbles, the easiest way to get rid of them is to either blow on them to get rid of the water, or burst them using the thin end of the dotting tool then blow off the water. This does disrupt the pattern though.

I also found from time to time the polish in my design looked murky – I found the easiest way to stop this happening is to get fresh water for every single nail – time consuming but worth it. Otherwise, try to ensure you have removed all remnants of the polish from the water before starting a fresh design.

Sometimes the polish didn’t spread much on the water. This can be caused by remnants of the previous polish still being present, by the water being too warm or if you don’t apply a large enough droplet to the water. To fix this, use the dotting tool to spread out the design, or tilt the marbling pot slightly until the design spreads.

Once or twice I found little ‘beads’ of polish at the bottom of the pot – this is caused either by using too much polish for a single droplet, or by dropping it from too high a height.

The design would appear crinkled or broken occasionally, so I just repeated the process for that nail. The best example of this is my ring finger in the first 2 photos – the red actually looked pretty cool over the original white swirls, so sometimes it can be a good thing!

Overall:

I love that the Rio Marble Nail Art Polish kit has made me try something new that I was always a little bit afraid to try beforehand. I had a lot of fun with my Andy playing around with the kit, and it’s the fact that every design is unique is a lot of fun. As with the Rio Lace Nail Foils, my favourite thing about the kit is that it puts everything you need into one place, rather than having to gather up everything separately. This is a really fun way to create nail art and is something that could be a lot of fun at a girly sleepover, or alternatively, makes the perfect girly Christmas gift. It’s something that definitely takes practice to perfect, but is a lot of fun along the way!

I absolutely love the kit and will definitely be playing around with water marbling a lot more in the future! It retails at £24.99 and is available from the Rio Beauty online store, as well as Argos, Amazon and Tesco online.

How do you feel about water marbling? Is this a kit that will be going on your Christmas list or have you already mastered the art? I’d say it’s a fab gift, it would make my Christmas if I knew it was waiting for me under the Christmas tree!

Look out for more products coming soon in my Christmas Gift Guide 2012!

Disclaimer: This product was sent to me for review purposes. However all opinions expressed are my own and are not in any way affected as a result of being sent this product by the brand.