Christmas Nail Art: Candycane Watermarble Tutorial

Hello again! This is my last Christmas design, I promise, but I just got my hands on a new bottle of white polish and thought I'd try out this candycane watermarble, inspired by @mucking_fusser on Instagram. This is probably my most successful watermarble to date, but I've still got some work to do, as you can see on my failure of a ring finger...But like anything, practice makes perfect, so don't give up before you've even started! With that in mind, check out my tutorial below to see how to get this sweet look for yourself :)

What I Used:

- OPI Nail Envy Base Coat
- OPI Alpine Snow
- Essie Aperitif
- Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat
- Plastic cup
- Toothpick
- Tweezers
- Scissors
- Tape
- Cottonbuds
- Nail polish remover and cleanup brush

1. Apply a base coat to protect your natural nails from stains and provide a smooth base for polish.

2. Cut up some pieces of tape to place around your nails for a quick cleanup. Stick one long piece of tape vertically on your skin right beside your nail, going up one side, across your fingertip and down the other side, then add a shorter piece across the bottom just under your cuticle. 

3. Apply one coat of white polish to your nails as a base colour. This will give the watermarbled polish something to adhere to, and will make the colours pop.

4. Once your nails are dry and all the tape is applied, fill a plastic or paper cup with room temperature water. Add a drop of white polish into the water and allow it to spread. Dripping the polish from about 1 or 2 centimetres above the surface works best.

5. Immediately after the white polish has spread into a circle, add a drop of red in the middle of the white circle. This should spread out and form a ring of white around the red circle. Keep alternating red and white drops until you have 7 or 8 rings of colour that form a sort of bullseye. If your red polish isn't fully opaque, like mine, add 2 drops of red at a time instead to prevent it going pink.

6. Working quickly, use a toothpick to lightly draw on the surface of the water. To get a pattern like mine, start from the centre of your bullseye and draw a horizontal line to your outer ring, in both directions. Then use vertical lines in a gentle, zig zag pattern. Don't play around too much with the design or the polish will break up. 

7. Once you've created a pattern, choose an area you'd like to capture and slowly lower your nail parallel into the water. Hold it just under the surface for 10-15 seconds while lightly blowing on the water to dry the polish. Use a cottonbud to clean up the dry polish on the surface before slowly removing your finger from the water. 

8. Shake off any excess water and remove the tape from around your nails with a pair of tweezers. The tape will have limited the mess, but clean up any remaining polish on your fingers with a cottonbud or brush dipped in polish remover.

9. Finish with a top coat for protection and shine, and you're done!  

Now your nails look good enough to eat! (disclaimer: don't eat them - they look better than they taste.)
I hope you guys liked my Christmas designs, I had a lot of fun making them and I hope some of you try one or two of them out for yourselves! Merry Christmas, and I'll see you next time!

Lisa xx