China Glaze Water Marbling Kit.

I wasn't planning on doing another water marble post so soon after that last one, but at Sally's Beauty Supply yesterday I came across marbling kits that I was very excited to try! China Glaze polishes are 5.99 with a Sally's card and the kit is 13.99. In the kit is 4 polishes, a plastic cup and a small orange stick. So it was way cheaper to purchase the kit than to get the polishes individually. Twirlin' and Swirlin' (pictured above) comes with the polishes "That's Shore Bright" "Pink Plumeria" "Snow" and "Too Yacht To Handle". There is a second set that I didn't purchase called Spin Me Round. I already owned "Celtic Sun" and just got "Snow" in the other kit, so I just bought the 2 other colors "Turned up Turquoise" and "I'm With The Lifeguard" to finish that set. Nouveau Cheap just did a post on both kits as well.

First up the cup that comes with the set is considerably smaller than the cup I'm used to using. Now I thought right away that it was useless and I'd never end up using it, but it is actually pretty nice. I'd never used something so small, and with smaller cups you can get more intricate designs.

Like all marbles, first up you paint your nails white and tape up the finger. Add the polishes to the water, swirl em around, and dip in your finger. For better directions check out my water marbling post here.

See? With the smaller cup you can get more design to show up on the nail easier. Cleaning the surface of the water was easier as well.

And here is the finished product. I only did on finger to test it. After this success I decided to do a whole hand using the polishes that come in the other kit Spin Me Round. "Turned Up Turquoise" gave me fits, but otherwise all the polishes work very well for marbling. I am impressed!

Spring Watermarble ~ Flora Glow

A new month, a new challenge from my nail art group World of Nailcraft! This month is was the palette "Flora Glow". Lovely soft pinks, teals and greens and at least one nail had to be watermarbled. You all know my love and fascination with watermarbles, so I had to get on this right away!  I put a base down of white and used all Sinful Colors for the marble. "Cotton Candy", "Unicorn", "Pistache", "Sweet Nothing", and "Tempest". Here is the image we were given as inspiration:

I wish I had more of the teal like blues, but I think I rather nailed the pinks and light yellow. The blue, purple, and green I added because it complemented the other 2 colors and I didn't want just a pink and yellow marble.

Dragonscales

I am so in love with these nails! The mottled look of the scales is stunning! On Messy Mansion's facebook page a fan posted dragonscale nails and I fell in love with them I just had to try them myself. I don't see a blog post from her but I will link to the facebook post here. I don't know what polishes Jae K used, but I painted my nails first with 2 coats of Sinful Colors "Clementine" I then sponged a little bit of Sally Hansen "Lighting" in patches. Where I didn't put "Lighting" is sponged just a teeny tiny amount of Essie "Fifth Avenue". Then I sponged all over it again with "Clementine" to blend all the edges. I went over the top of the red and yellow to make them not so bold. This way it all looked like shades of orange.

Satisfied with the base colors, I then stamped over it with MM21. Scales on all fingers, but a dragon for the accent nail. I used Cosmetic Arts "TGIF". To give you an idea of how big the stamps are, here is my nails before clean up:

More than satisfactory for my nail length.

Here is Jae's picture:

And mine again:

One of my better Monkey See, Monkey Do mani's if I do say so myself.

Koi Fish.

I almost named this post "Jelly Fish" for no other reason than it made me giggle. After my fail of a seahorse, I still wanted to try making an image go across all my nails. Other than a little mess up on the middle finger (it's a bit twisted) I really like it! I painted my nails white (when my bottles of white get low I pour them all into one bottle, so this is a mixture of Sally Hansen "White On", Wet n Wild "French White Creme" and Milani "White On The Spot") I then stamped with Cosmetic Arts "TGIF" using Messy Mansion plate MM29. I colored in the Koi using OPI "Y'all Come Back Ya Hear?" making sure to leave uncolored white patches. Then I filled in the water with a frankened blue jelly I made. I love this so much more than my seahorse from the other day!

And here is the Koi fish for comparison in-case you're not sure what a real one looks like.

April Fools Again!

April Fools is here, so it's time for another "manicures that made a fool out of me". Now, there isn't too many this year, not because I didn't screw up any, but because I mostly stopped taking pictures of manis that didn't turn out right. Here is one that happened just recently. I had just got some new Messy Mansion plates and pulled out my jellys. I had to make a blue for the water because I don't own a blue jelly. I then made the poor decision to color in the seahorse with pink. It just isn't an attractive color combination. When stamping I didn't get all the unwanted parts of the image off the stamper so there is a blotch of white that I tried covering up with the jelly on my ring finger. I'm also outside the lines on the index. I'm just not happy with the over all design.

Next up is a glitter placement that looked a lot cooler in my head than it did on my nail. I just got carried away. It's not horrid, just not what I had in mind. I wanted a falling gold coin look, and all I got was a gold disco ball. One of my many green manis for St. Patrick's Day this year. I also had a massive problem with air bubbles again. I think I may have just used too much topcoat when I was trying to smooth out the glitter.

And of course if we are mentioning fails, my foil flop has to come up as well. I've since been told that only certain topcoats will work over foils with out destroying them. Topcoats I don't own...yet.

That's it for now. I'll have to remember to take pics of the manis that don't turn out well just for this post each year.

Police Nails

My Uncle just celebrated 30 years with the police force and will be retiring soon. I just got Messy Mansion's plate MM28. Coincidence? I think not. The universe is obviously telling me I need to do a crime and punishment mani so here it is. I rushed the stamping a bit because I was running late for work, but over all I like how it turned out! Index, middle and pinkie are all painted an unnamed grey from Fingr's and stamped over with BundleMonster's BM414 using Wet n Wild "Black Creme". I then used MM28 again and Cosmetic Arts "Picture Day" to add some fun images. Oh, the DNA strands are from MM25. The ring and thumb are Sally Hansen "Lighting" stamped with MM28 again in "Black Creme". I really do like it. The grey fingers remind me of fingerprint dust. Many people don't know this, but I started taking classes thinking I wanted to get into forensic science. That was the vague plan anyway. Then one semester I took a microbiology class as just a prerequisite and fell in love with micro. So Forensics fell to the back-burner as Micro took front stage, but it still holds a soft spot in my heart.

Foiled by Foils

My Foils from yesterday that I was super crazy proud of? This is what they looked like today. I didn't get more than a few hours out of them. I need to find a way to protect the foil, but topcoat ate it. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do, but it's time to experiment.