many many marbles!

Morning everyone!
As I've mentioned before, I've been super attracted to water marbling lately, and it turns out, so are all my polish buddies! So we all decided to do a water marble today and try to sharpen our skills.
(Some people don't need to sharpen their skills. Those people annoy me.)

I made a valiant effort this time and I got some really good results, apart from one finger.
The one messed up finger ruins this mani for me. Some day, I'll be able to do it with no messes!

Index and middle finger - great!
Pinky - decent!
Ring finger - DAMN!
I'm not sure why the polish decided to bleed in the ring finger and not the others. It still looks okay but I wish it wasn't murky!

My thumb turned out pretty cool, too.
I didn't bother to do this on both hands because I wasn't happy enough with it!

The polishes used are OPI Skull & Glossbones and OPI - OPI Ink.
I used S&G as a base color and then used both in the marble.
I wanted to use Orly Halley's Comet in there too but it wouldn't spread in the water. Sad.

All the rest of my buds will be posting their manis at some point today - being on the east coast of Canada, I'm usually awake before everyone else! So check back throughout the day and you should see lots of pretty manis popping up in the photo collection below!
Have a lovely day everyone, I've sadly got more studying to do for an exam tonight. I can't wait to be done this semester! Friday can't come soon enough.

More about → many many marbles!

31 Day Challenge - Day 20 - Water Marble

The Tazmanian Devil! I wanted the marble to represent the chaos tornado that was his method of travel.

This didn't turn out exactly like what I had in mind, but it's the best I could do considering that I'm not well acquainted with water marbling. It's just not my preferred method of nail art. I don't have a lot of practice, and it took me over an hour to just get 3 nails done! My design in the water kept looking like crap.

In the end I seem to have combined every nail art technique known to man in one manicure. 

Water marbling, polka dots, freehand, and rimming the edges.

Here's a GIF of how I painted Taz.

This was my first attempt at this manicure. 

I wanted spiral designs, but it mostly ended up looking like Agate stones. I had finished this late into the night and didn't have time to paint Taz then. And I didn't like the gray patches. So I just removed it and attempted again another night.

This was the next opportunity I had to watermarble. I settled on just trying to get vertical stripes across the nails. The middle nail and thumb were the closest to what I had in mind.

I had seen someone that posted simple polka dots on top of their water marble to hide the bubbles or flaws. So I went with that. Lol. Again, it ended late into the night and had to go to work the next day, so I left it at this stage.

The next night, I freehanded Taz on the index because that was my least favorite marble design.

I had some minor tip wear, but a good deal of shrinkage around the cuticle from a coat of Seche Vite over a long since dry manicure. So to hide that I did some "rimming" or freehanding a border/frame around each nail. I just used a Kiss Nail Art Striper in black. Then another coat of Seche Vite.

I was undecided at first, but I think I like how it turned out!

More about → 31 Day Challenge - Day 20 - Water Marble

water marble bandwagon

The water marble bandwagon has been driving around a lot lately. I have been seeing SO MANY awesome water marbles on blogs recently, it's insane.
My friend Jodi @ Captivating Claws does one every week! And The Nail Network pretty much killed me with her two recent successes. And there's way more I can't begin to mention.

So of course, I had to hop on the bandwagon. But I don't think I quite made it on because this is not as awesome as I envisioned it being in my head! It went well, but not amazingly well.

Tada! To create this marbled look, I used three of my favorite Zoya colors - Elodie, Audrina and Lo from the Gossip Collection. 
I didn't end up with a lot of marbling on each nail because I like to dip several nails at a time to conserve polish.
I think the next time I marble, I'm going to do it in a shot glass, so I can use less polish but still get a bunch of swirls! Hopefully that's how it will work, anyway.

I especially loved the way my ring finger turned out! And these colors just look so cute together.
I used one coat of Lo as my base color to make the colors really pop.

My poor thumb got practically nothing! Hahaha. Oh well.

I've marbled a few times before and I always feel like I don't do as well as I should. Next time I try it, I am going to seriously rock it. Because I'm convinced I can do it!

One last picture to show you... I was too lazy to marble my right hand so I just wore a solid color.

This is Zoya - Lo again, but with a coat of CND - Violet Shimmer. These two look so awesome together!
It looked so cool I even had to show you my right hand which does not like to pose for pictures at all.
And you can see I even somehow dented 2 nails which is something I almost never do.
Right hand hates me. But that combo was too cute not to show off! I think I'll wear it on my toes a lot this summer because it is so vibrant and cheerful!

Okay, there you have my awkward right hand and my semi-successful marble.
Have you guys been marbling lately? Know of any awesome combos I should try?

More about → water marble bandwagon

Inspired to Water Marble

I was drawn to water marble again because I have a dress that includes these colors and is a swirl print. It reminded me of a water marble, and I like the dress so I thought I'd like the nails too. I was right. I love this color combo and it's not half bad as a marble. It took me forever though.....

I'm not great at water marbling, but you can search the vast realms of YouTube for a tutorial on how to do it.

This pic is a bit blurry just to show the sparkle of China Glaze Fairy Dust that I layered on top.

For once I'm up during the day and painting my nails while the sun is out! So time for some rare sun pictures!

For the most part all of the nails are striped left to right, but the ring finger ended up wonky. I just left it because it added an accent after all!

 Once back inside:

I ended up redoing the first few fingers because I had drug through the marble too much. The stripes were too small and it ended up losing most of the colors. I fixed them all to follow just a few strokes through the marble.

 Polishes Used:

Wet N Wild Black Creme

Sinful Colors Snow Me White

China Glaze Spontaneous, For Audrey, Bahamian Escape, and topped all of it of with Fairy Dust

I'm really proud of it! Hope you like it too!

More about → Inspired to Water Marble

Pink Water Marble Reject

This was a reject manicure from the Blogger Challenge Pink Week. I rarely water marble because I'm not very good at it. I'm not too thrilled with how it turned out which is why I didn't feature it during the Pink Week. But what the hell? I'll show you now. I used China Glaze Laced Up, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Bubblegum Pink, and China Glaze Fairy Dust. (My base polish was Laced Up, so that's why the Fairy Dust is just sparkly over hot pink.)

 It's just bleh in my eyes. Maybe part of the problem is that it's just too much pink. I might like it more with another color mixed in.

More about → Pink Water Marble Reject

My First Water Marble!

Hi readers! I slept in so late today! haha I guess that's the beauty of the weekend. :)

I have been aware of the water marble technique for quite some time and have even attempted it with Dustin a few times and it was always a big, fat fail! Finally, Dustin figured out a way to make it work, and here is our first water marble! 

Colors used: Color Club Pretty in Platinum and one of Dustin's frankens, Black Raven.

This is still messy looking because we didn't use tape or Vaseline to protect my skin from the polish. Pretty sure we know better now! 

Then, to help smooth things out and make it all a little more uniform, we put CND Violet Shimmer on top. This is my favorite of the 2 looks...and I think Violet Shimmer has grown on me since I first got it and now want all the CND Effects! haha

So there you have it! Maybe our next attempt will be a little neater. :P Have you guys tried water marbling before? <3

More about → My First Water Marble!

31 Day Challenge: Day 20

Good morning, everyone! (Or good afternoon, goodnight, etc!)

The theme for today in the 31 Day Challenge is Water Marble.
I've done water marbles a few times before, and I'm pretty good at it, but I just wasn't feeling inspired for this one so it came out sorta sucky.

Not my best. Haha.
But LOOK at my pinky.  Look at the holo showing up in the marble! That is the weirdest ever because the polish I used for this is one of the "dud" holos. Why does a marbling bring out the holo?

I think marbles look better in bright colors but I just wanted to do neutrals. So it's not the best, but still decent!

The polishes I used are:
OPI - Parlez-Vous OPI?
OPI - Skull and Glossbones
Color Club - Worth the Risque
H&M - Wawawoom

I used Parlez-Vous OPI? as my base color. I love this polish. Love the french name, love the color. Love love love.
I also love that I only paid $3.99 for this.

2 easy coats. Great formula. No complaints.

More about → 31 Day Challenge: Day 20

blue water marble

Good morning!
I had a hard time deciding what to post this morning, so I'll probably have a swatch post up later too.

The other day while I was staying with my cousin, I water marbled her nails. And then I decided to do mine too!

It turned out lovely!
I used all China Glaze polishes, as I prefer to do with water marbling.
For Audrey, Shower Together, and Liquid Leather.
It took me a while to decide on the colors, I stared at my China Glaze container for a while before picking these three.

I used one coat of For Audrey as a base coat. I really like how Shower Together came out much lighter in the marble - it looks pretty.

Marbling is so much fun but so messy and sometimes wasteful. Haha.

More about → blue water marble

the best water marble i have ever done!

I love marbling, but I don't love wasting the polish.
And I don't love how the nails don't always end up similar enough.
So this time I decided to just do accent nails, and it was a great idea!
One of the nails ended up so good I didn't want to take it off!
(P.S. this was before I chopped my beautiful nails off :( )

See the awesome finger yet? No? Okay here's a bigger one.

Top right!! So awesome!

I miss it now! Hah!

The thumb on this one ended up pretty nice too.

Now, what I don't understand about this marble, is that it made my non-holo Color Club Fashion Addict holo!
I don't know why, but the marble really made it come out.

This is the best picture I could get of it to show the colors. It really did shine all rainbow-y in the sun.
Which is just so weird because Fashion Addict alone did not at all.

It also made Gamer Glam more sparkly too!

The colors you can see here are, as mentioned, Color Club Fashion Addict (the more opaque sparkly part,) China Glaze Gamer Glam (the thinner sparkly part,) China Glaze Spontaneous (darker purple,) and Joe Fresh Faded Violet (the lavender.)
I also used Faded Violet as a base for the marble so that it popped more, and on the other nails.

I miss this marble and I miss my long nails!
Anyway, back to my granny hobby aka crocheting! I have an adorable project going on now that I hope to have finished today. I'm also going to do my nails sometime soon! I love being done school.

More about → the best water marble i have ever done!

Another Water Marble

I consider this one a fail. I didn't even finish and do the other hand because I was so discouraged. The polishes weren't flowing well and it was just more trouble than it was worth.

 I do like how I almost managed to get a flower shape on my pinky!

More about → Another Water Marble

mint marble nail fail

As I said the day before yesterday, I spent my day off water marbling.
Before I got the cute Kicks one done, I had tried out a mint and lavender marble like one I had seen on WAH nails.
However, my mint did not want to play nice.

You couldn't even tell it was mint!
Over the white it just looked white. Some of the nails were cute but this is the type of marble I can't keep on my nails. Haha!
For this marble I used:
Icing - Mint 2 Be
China Glaze - Spontaneous
Joe Fresh - Faded Violet

I've had a bit of school work to do again this week, I'm hoping to get to redo my nails tonight or tomorrow.

As a side note, can anyone identify this mystery polish that has found it's way into my Color Club Catwalk Queen set?!

Dusty mauve purple, not taupe-y, highly pigmented.
Mystery polish!

More about → mint marble nail fail

china glaze kicks water marble

Today we had a storm, and my university wasn't closed, so I decided to have a personal snow day. Hah!

I used my time wisely - I water marbled!

(click to enlarge)

These are so much brighter in person than the pictures show! I took a million pictures to try and capture it but I couldn't.

(click to enlarge)

Check out the middle finger!!

(click to enlarge)

Love the thumb.

(click to enlarge)

Tried to show more brightness without the flash, but it didn't really work.
How about a webcam picture?

I think this sort of shows the fluorescence!

I am really loving this marble. This one will stay on for a few days!

Here are the polishes I used:

Picture those colors in the marble. That's how bright it is!
These 3 polishes are from the China Glaze Kicks collection, as I mentioned in the title.
This collection was for summer 2009, and I wish I could find the rest of the polishes. I need Custom Kicks especially!
They marbled wonderfully, and of course, I painted my nails white before dipping.

Now that you've seen the nails, check out the mess water marbling creates!

Paper towels, tape, flyers, a ton of polishes to find the right combo, remover, acetone, qtips, tooth picks, yikes!
(Headband, pills and phone not required :P)

More about → china glaze kicks water marble

Oilslick Water Marble

I believe it was in a contest entry for Rescue Beauty Lounge's new color contest that I first heard this idea. The fan that submitted the entry was suggesting a nail polish color that would have all the varying duochrome-y goodness of a fresh oil slick.
*edit* the fan was a polish problem 

(this pic was obviously copied and pasted from a google search)

That sounds beautiful to me, but sadly I don't think it made it into the final submissions. :(

Well tonight has been terrible! I haven't even been to sleep yet and it's nearly 4 am! Just insomnia I guess.... So while my mind is racing with new thoughts and ideas for nail polish art, this is what I came up with. I was so pleasantly suprised because I totally stink at water marbles. I don't have enough patience to practice it and get better. Tonight seemed like a perfect night to play in it.

I started just doing my last three fingers but it turned out so great, I kept going!

 As I kept going, my right hand got messier, more bubbles, and less ease in making the swirls. Most likely due to many factors.... It being my dominant hand, my water was kinda chunky at this point, and by now it was nearing the 2nd hour of working on it! I went through about half of "Lost" Season Two during this sleepless night.

 Here is what I used:

• Sally Hansen Insta Dri - Silver Sweep (which I find is actually a lot smoother and less streaky than Millennium!)
• ChG - Emotion (pink) , Avalanche (purple) , Adore (blue) , & Cherish (green). If I'm not mistaken I think these are all from the Romantique collection.

 One more picture with flash to show just how metallic and awesomely shiny it is!

Colette is the queen of water marbiling. If you have any questions about this technique or would like to see a tutorial of how it's done check out her blog here: My Simple Little Treasures.

More about → Oilslick Water Marble