Water Spotted - Comparison

I've been waiting for a way to DIY the OPI Black Spotted nail polish (the one released as a part of the Spiderman collection, France Exclusive). Instead I've seen a lot of water spotted nail art - which is more fun, actually! You can use any colour, and you don't have to dedicate a polish for the spotted look only.

There are great tutorials out there, for example by Colette from My Simple Little Pleasures and Cutepolish. Now I just needed to find out, what product would work for me. And maybe this comparison helps you a bit, too?
I used six different products, including a facial mist, two hairsprays, two other hair products and a perfume – basically every spray product I had at hand. I didn't use hand sanitizer, because I didn't have any in spray form, and I wanted to see if some of these worked.

I tried these with Borghese Notte black. The ones that made their way on my nails, went over my current manicure: a coat of Sephora Diving in Malaysia over black, sponged with Catrice Iron Mermaiden. Let's see what happened!

Frantsila Organics Rose Water
(main ingredients: rosa damascena distilled hydrolate)

 Rose water made spots, but mainly formed a bubbly surface on the top of the polish. A fail.

TIGI Bed Head Masterpiece hairspray
(Alcohol denat., Dimethyl ether, acrylates)

This hairspray just seemed to push polish around, no matter from how far I tried spraying it. Some small spots appeared, though. Still a fail.

Nelly hairspray
(Isopropyl alcohol, Methylal)

This hairspray created a spotted pattern, but the spots were rather large. They grew even larger if I waited for too long after spraying. A kind of a success.

Curly Sexy Hair Curling detangler
(water, amodimethicone, tallowtrimonium cloride, some proteins)

Was somewhat foamy and made a bubbly finish. A fail.

Schwartzkopf Osis iron serum
(water, alcohol denat., vp/va copolymer)

Spots and bubbles mixed, but the spots were tiny. A fail. I didn't try it on the nail, though - the spots might have grown a bit.

Aqua de Loewe perfume
(80% alcohol)

Genuinely spotted pattern. The spots grew larger with time with this one, too. A success.

From these products clearly the best two were Nelly hairspray and the perfume. You can see the results below. The perfume costs 30ml/ca 25 euros, versus Nelly hairspray 125ml / ca 2 euros... Hmmm... Which one would I like to "waste" on my nails? Plus I actually like the "bigger spots" effect of the hairspray experiment. With the hairspray the spots were also sharper than with the perfume (no, it's not because of the pic only).

Pinky (lower): hairspray, Ring (upper): perfume

So, in conclusion, products containing a lot of water didn't work. Products containing a lot of alcohol worked better, except the TIGI. But presumably it's not all about the alcohol content, because Colette did try with pure alcohol and reported it didn't work. Next time I'll make a comparison between these two and a hand sanitizer. I just have to find a spray, or dilute my own as Colette did.

Until the next time, then!