First Water Spotted Mani with Evergreen and Unfor-greta-bly Blue

I've been wanting OPI Black Spotted ever since I first saw it... but since it was (is?) available exclusively at Sephora stores in France there was no hope of me ever getting my hands on it. I was really happy when I found this water spotted technique on YouTube! It creates a fairly similar effect, although with more effort than simply painting on a polish. But I'll take it!

I think my right middle finger nail is my favorite! On the rest of my nails, the spots are bigger than I wanted them. I guess I was spraying too close to the water. I also ended up with some large black areas which I wasn't too happy with but this isn't bad for a first try. I think I'll try this soon with other colors!

For this mani, I started off with a base of 2 coats of Evergreen from the Sephora + Pantone Universe collection (see swatch on it's own here). I wanted a gradient so I added OPI Unfor-greta-bly Blue at the tips. I didn't bother using a sponge for the gradient, I just used the polish brush since I figured it would be covered by the water spotting. I used Sally Hansen Black Heart and Garnier Fructis Aqua Styler Long Hair hairspray for the water spotted technique. 

Here is a picture before my nails hit the water:

This technique isn't too hard. If you know how to water marble already you should find this really easy. If you've never water marbled before you may have issues with the polish spreading but you will just need to figure out the right type of water and water temperature that works. Also some polishes won't work with the water.

Basically you start with a cup of room temperature, filtered water. Then drop black polish onto the surface of the water. It should spread out. Immediately spray the surface of the water using either hand sanitizer or hair spray. The spray will break up the black and you should have clear spots. It might take a few tries to figure out how far away to spray. If you spray too close to the water the spots will be too big. From there, it is exactly the same as a water marble. Line up your nail(s) with parts of the pattern that you want on your nail, dip into the water, clean up excess polish from the surface of the water, pull your finger(s) out, clean up. Done!

I followed this tutorial from cutepolish except I used hairspray instead of hand sanitizer spray that she uses