Tutorial: Multi-Colored Water Spotted Nails

Hey guys,

So I did a multi-color water spotted mani a week or two ago and when I posted it on Beautylish someone suggested that I do a tutorial for it.  I thought this was a pretty good idea because I haven't seen any out there for using more than one color in a water spotted mani.  If you have never done a water spotted mani or would like to see a video on how it is done then please visit CutePolish on YouTube.  I hope you all find this helpful!


Colors used: Orly Pure Porcelain, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue and Twisted Pink, and Wet N Wild On A Trip

Step One:  Paint your nails a base color, I would suggest a white or off-white for this.  Also apply a little Vaseline or some tape around your fingers to help aid in clean up later.

Step Two: Get a cup a fill it to the top with room temperature water, make sure it is a cup you are not going to be drinking out of again. Oh and do not use a Styrofoam cup the nail polish will melt it! Pick three  colors for your water spots.  Now take one of the colors drip a dot of polish onto the surface of the water.  Spray it with some kind of alcohol based spray about 4-5 inches away (you can use body spray, anti-bacterial spray, hairspray).  I usually spray between 1-3 times, it depends on how well the polish start to separate.

Step Three: Repeat step two with your other two colors.  

Step Four:  Remove the tape or wipe the Vaseline and nail polish off your skin and clean up any other polish with a q-tip or brush and some acetone.  Top coat your look and you should be done!

A couple of tips if you have never done water spotted nails before.

1.It can be a bit tricky to do at first, I find that I like to only work with one drop of polish, especially when doing more than one color for the spots.  I also find that when I do more than one drop it seems to not want to separate once I spray the body spray. 

2. And on the topic of body spray I would highly suggest you do not use aerosol hairspray, I have tried it once and the spray was too powerful it pretty much blew the nail polish out of my cup of water.  

3. It is important that the water you use is room temp, if it is too cold the polish dries very quickly and you will have issues with getting it to spot.

Multi-Colored Water Spotted

Hey guys,

So when I tried the water spotted nails the other day I thought that it might be cool to see what it would look like if I did a few different colors.  This one was definitely trial and error, I had a hard time getting the color to spot at first and I was trying to use hairspray but it was not working well.  I figured out that if I did just one drop of the nail color onto the water and then sprayed with body spray I got the polish to separate better.  I did one color at a time and I thought it looked pretty cool once I was done with it.


Colors used: base, Orly Pure Porcelain, China Glaze Electric Pineapple, Sinful Colors Why Not and Bikini

Water Spotted Nails

Hey guys,

So I decided to try out the water spotted technique that everyone has been doing lately.  I  first saw this when Cute Polish on YouTube posted a video on it several months ago.  If you would like to watch the video go here.  The technique starts off very similar to water marble nails using a cup of water and dripping polish on the surface of the water.  But for this you use only one color and you will need some kind of alcohol based spray (hairspray, body spray) I used a body spray but I think next time I will try hairspray to see if I get a different result.  You drop the polish one drop at a time until it spreads over the surface of the water, I did three to four drops for each nail, after you have the polish in the cup you need to spray the surface with your alcohol based spray.  This will cause the polish to separate and that is how you get the spotted look.  This was my first time doing this and I seemed to have a hard time get the polish to actually spot, I think my water was a little to cold for one and I think I should try a different spray next time.  Anyways this was actually super easy to do and you get such a cool look from it!  Make sure you cover the skin and some of your fingers with tape or Vaseline before you do this because you will get polish all over your fingers and it is HORRIBLE to clean up.


Colors used:  Orly Royal Navy and Orly Dazzle