At this year’s annual Pinterest Christmas Party with the ladies, our lovely host, Shauna, had us try out a quick little project: marbling with nail polish. She picked up white bowls & mugs at the dollar store. Then all you need is a disposable foil container, nail polish, hot water, and some creative bravery.
There’s lots of great full tutorials already out there {like here and here}, so I’m not going to do step by step. Just going to offer some tips we discovered as we each took a turn at this project.
Tip #1: Get your work area set up, all the nail polish colours you’re going to use picked out & open each bottle, so everything is ready to go quickly.
Tip #2: Open a friggin’ window {or two}! It was a damn cold winter night, and I’m pretty sure we got a little high on fumes.
Tip #3: In case you thought doing this with young kids was a good idea {ummm, nail polish & kids don’t usually mix}, please reconsider. It’s a simple “adult” craft. Again, hello, fumes.
Tip #4: Work quickly. Drizzle the nail polish close to the surface of the water, slowly, but do work quickly. The polish will start to get gummy as it hardens & can lead to lumpy {somewhat ugly} results. But hey, if you don’t like how it turns out, just use nail polish remover & start again.
Tip #5: You don’t necessarily have to take the time to swirl the nail polish in the water with a toothpick before dipping your item in. Simply the way you drizzled the nail polish colours into the water can give beautiful results.
Tip #6: Prepare to be surprised! Or brace yourself! Or heck, just dive in & DO NOT overthink it. This is one of those crafty projects that you can’t predict what the end product will look like. Yes, you’re choosing the colour scheme, but that’s about all you have control over. I found it exciting, others found it a little frightening. Experiment!
You can generally rate the success of a Pinterest project by whether you’d repeat it. And yes, I would definitely gives this one another go. Several of us at the party were interested in attempting to dip our bowls upside down, so that the inside gets marbled {not food safe, but to keep jewelry in}. I think tile coasters would be awesome too {and a great hostess gift idea}. But high on the list to try, is a marbled hanging planter! They’re gorgeous!
Happy crafting!