Water spotted technique

The other night I was sitting there wondering what to paint on my nails when I started to think about various nail art techniques that I hadn't yet tried, or had only done once or twice.  When I listed them out, there were quite a few of them.  So I challenged myself to attempt them all. From water spotted to sugar spun, dry brush to marbled, I've got a mix of different technique manis coming up over the next few days.

First up is Water Spotted technique.  I decided to attempt to make Turquoise stone nails using this technique.  I was very happy with how my thumb, index and ring fingers came out, but less than impressed with my middle and ring fingers.  

Most tutorials for this technique recommend using a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol in it but I also read some that said you could use hairspray. I couldn't find a spare spray bottle to put rubbing alcohol in, so I just grabbed my hairspray.  It was a bit tricky using the hairspray to get the polish to separate well on the water. Hence the very miss matched appearance of my nails. I had to be just the right distance from the spray to the polish to get the polish to work.  After I dipped my middle finger and saw how different it look, I considered removing the polish and starting all over, but that was just too much work at 11.pm at night, and I thought you would all like to see that not everything I do turns out well ;)

For my base I used Face of Australia Isn't it delicious. I then used plastic wrap to do some 'Saran' wrap design using Zoya Ziv (this was also the first time using that technique, so I guess I killed two techniques with this mani)  I used regular black nail polish for the the water spotted technique.

I also recently purchases some Hex nail charms.  They are so awesome.  The price is really affordable because each charm is reusable.  The best bit is that they are slightly curved so they sit beautifully flat on your nail.  I went it bit overboard with my order and probably have enough different designs to wear a different one every week for a month, but I just couldn't decided on which designs to buy.