NAILS | Bubble Nails Made with Actual Bubbles! #CBBxManiMonday

Folks, welcome to "Bubble Nails"! It has been a long time since I have tried anything with gel polish let alone a fancy new nail art trend so yay for this month's #CBBxManiMonday theme of "Experimentation"!  

Bubble Nail Art
 PR samples

This was a somewhat successful first attempt as my nails definitely look "bubbly", but I definitely learned a few things I should try to do if I ever attempt to do this kind of look again. After looking at a couple of tutorials online, this one in Russian seemed to be the most straightforward.


While most of the tutorials out there use gel polish, this can be done with regular polish, but just takes longer because you have to wait for the bubbles to actually DRY which takes about 5 minutes vs shoving your nails under a lamp and waiting a minute. I went with gel polish, but used a peel off base coat underneath as I wasn't sure how these would turn out or whether I would even WANT to keep them on!

Bubble Nail Art

I cured two coats of black gel polish from J & S Nails followed by curing a no wipe (non-sticky) top coat (IBD Intense Seal). Some videos said to use a sticky top coat, but as I only had no wipe I was stuck with that. Choosing black as a base coat means your "bubble coat" should be a lighter colour so I went with Red Carpet Manicure Sandal Scandal*. Keep this coat reallllly thin because the thicker it is, the more 3D the bubble design can be which can feel very annoying.

Then you add your bubbles! I used dish soap and created my bubbles with a straw. When it came time to apply the bubbles, I used a fan brush to scoop the bubbles onto the wet blue polish which immediately generated a bubble pattern. Those areas that are smooth on my nails are where I should have added more bubbles before curing. Cure your bubbly nails and then wipe off the excess gently with paper towel and this is what you are left with! I also think I should have made my bubbles more "watery" as opposed to fluffy so that my nails weren't quite as rough to the touch (filing and adding more top coat didn't really work).

Bubble Nail Art

Would you ever want to try Bubble Nails or are they just too weird looking? There are a ton of variations that look far more polished and prettier so I guess I could try again, but I'm not a huge fan of playing around with gel polishes since I change my nails frequently, but they definitely allow for some interesting nail art techniques so we shall see!

Be sure to check out: Renee, Trysh and Eithne's blog and social media channels for their "Experimental" manicures!

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