fail of the week; water marbling

LOL.  These pics made me laugh so hard.  It was an honest effort but an evident fail.  You don't get better without practice so I don't consider this a total waste.  I'll get there (=

base: two coats of ChG "Lemon fizz"
marbles: some random purple unlabeled L.A. Colors Color Craze and "Static electricity" by L.A. Colors Color Craze

I tried having a talk with my nails.  Went great. Really.


Me: hey thumb, I'm going to clean you up now.
Thumb: no, no you're not. i'm gonna give you hell, kid.
Me: hey ring finger, what are you doing?
Ring finger: raging against the machine cathryn, raging against the machine
Me: pinky, you ok?  what happened?
Pinky: herpaderp
Me: oh btw, index finger, what's with that weird glare you got there, you know the one not caused by light?
Index finger: black magic.

LOL OH WELL!

marble swatches

ive been playing around with marbling a lot to figure out the best techniques. i still havent figured that out but i did make some cute color combinations lol.

im starting to think marbling would be a great idea for highschool girls going to a pep rally or something along those lines. i made one (not shown) of virginia tech's colors unintentionally. a lot of school colors would look nice marbled. i was thinking my own highschools colors. since i transfered my junior year i have two sets. the first was silver and navy blue and the other was gold and blue. just a thought!

heres what i think when i see these samples: halloween (spiderweb nails), cotton candy and summer! im going a pineapple mani soon, ill show pics later this week.  i love the results!! sorry though, i cannot remember which brands or names these are.. i was just mixing and matching haphazardly. enjoy regardless. click for enlarged detail! (=

"fruit stripe gum" mani!

pink & yellow are two of my favorite colors, but it wasnt until i finished this marbled mani that i realized they looked a bit like fruit stripe gum, especially my pinky!  this time i think it went a little bit better than my previous attempts. im starting to figure out what works best for me and which techniques are more efficient.

from left to right (and in the order used):
funky fingers "off with their heads!"
hard candy "splendid"
konad black
l.a. colors art deco "gold glitter"
sally hansen intsa-dri anti-chip top coat

i used fauxnad plate m11 for the design. i also used my dotting tool with the gold glitter to enhance the overall look by putting dots of gold glitter over the black dots.

i was happy with the final result, mostly because i havent been able to get a marble to look halfway decent. i think this mani overall though is a little flashy for me. i only wore it for one day and ended up taking it off.  i dont know if it was the color against my skin or what but i think i have a preference for more simple manicures! i did my friends nails too with a neon purple and a neon blue and she wears it so much better than i wore mine. ill try to get pics of hers up later.

also, just a side note: five below has an alice in wonderland collection with some very pretty cremes.  there is also a blue glitter that was beautiful! not sure if this is old news or not but i was so excited!

(bottom two images are clickable!)

new haul, new technique, new notd!

i went shopping! i went to the dollar tree and walgreens. i got 5 polishes and 5 nail art polishes from the dollar tree and 3 sparkly topcoats from walgreens on sale for $1.09 each! how exciting! my haul;



the three polishes i got from walgreens were absolutely stunning. theyre from the covergirl "boundless color" collection which i had never heard of, and were the last 3 left on the rack. im sure i wouldve bought one of each color given the opportunity. i really like the bottles and brushes too.



from right to left;
-pink twinkle. there is irregular flecks of foil inside this one.
-city lights. a holo topcoat (the little bits of holographic glitter are sparse compared to a typical holo polish)
-amethyst mist. a purple jelly base with hexagon multicolor glitter & teeny tiny bits of glitter as well.

theyre so beautiful and the application is wonderful. i dont have _that_ many drugstore polishes that i actually use but i will definitely be employing these 3 lovelies (=

-----

in other news, i tried my first marbling last night! i cant say i was too happy with the outcome. in fact, i removed it right after taking the pictures. here is a few things i learned;
-petroleum jelly moves when you insert your finger in the water and often times ended up under polish resulting in a re-do
-aside from a base coat, a base color is needed to bring out the vibrancy of the marbled colors
-scotch tape works relatively well. i used one long piece for the sides and top of my nail, and then secured that piece with another piece of tape around the whole finger and that piece edged off the bottom of the nail.
-for some reason, i could not get 2 different holos to work together, but that just could be me.
-i cannot figure out how to avoid a large gap on my thumb; i retried over 5 times and had a large gap, in the same place, of uncolored nail each time - any advice?



like i said before, i think a white underneath wouldve really made these colors pop. i used orly "liquid vinyl" and funky fingers "punch". the black came out mostly gray.. i wonder if it just isnt marbling compatible or it wouldve been brighter with white underneath. not TOO bad for my first attempt!

-----

my NOTD has got to be one of my new favorites. i used my new colors for this;
-sally hansen insta-grip base coat
-maybelline wet shine "pink splash"
-covergirl boundless color "pink twinkle"
-seche vite topcoat

the golden/pink flecks look so much cuter irl. i had a hard time capturing the color of the flecks and i tried all 20 different camera settings with different flashes.. the best ive found so far is the flower/soft flash option. i had some luck with the food/soft flash too. i think its because these are both meant to capture fine detail. without a doubt the worst setting was one for text, DARK, blurry and spotty. anyways, here it is;