Water Marble Nails, I think I have got it!

Tried water marble nails ages ago, but they didn't work out so I just carried on with freehand art instead.
Recently a friend encouraged me to try again (thank you Tracy!) so I decided I would. The first ones were bad so I removed them straight away without letting anyone see them. But I still wanted to try again so I panted my nails and used silver glitters to water marble a design on top. Those I kinda liked so I photographed them and wore them to work all weekend.

Got really positive feedback on them from my colleagues so I decided I would give full on proper water marbling a go again.
This is my journey...

My starting point was a base coat of Sally Hansen continuous treatment base & top coat, followed by one coat of my base colour Barry M 310 Mushroom. Now I am lazy and couldn't be bothered taping up my fingers so I just got to picking the colours for the marbling.

I picked Cutex 'Strong Nail' nail enamel in eggplant, huckleberry & sweet pea.

I need to stress how important it is for the water you use to be truly room temp. I think this has been my problem with getting to grips with marbling as I have used both cold and hot water without success so I think water temp must be a high priority in order to get marbling to work. I had the water sat in the chosen bowl for a good couple of hours to make sure it was the right temp this time.

As you can see this ruins bowls so make sure it's one you don't mind getting dirty for life.

Next point is make sure you open all the pots so you can drop the polish colours on the water quickly as you have a short amount of time to get this done, pattern made and on the nail before it starts to dry.

now drip one colour at a time into the centre of the bowl and watch it spread then add the next drip, and so on. I used 3 colours and dripped each one twice as shown below.

now the next step is to make your design. I used a kebab stick, you can use anything really, cocktail stick, orange stick, pin, etc,etc.

Then you submerge your nail into the desired part of the pattern and keep it there whilst gently blowing on the paint on the surface of the water to dry it. Then twirl your stick in the now dried paint to separate it from your finger. Once the surface of the water is clear of polish remove your nail and leave to dry, repeat until all your nails are marbled. Your should end up with something similar to the photos below.

Messy but now marbled, any excess can be removed easily with a cotton bud soaked in nail polish remover, take care around the edges of the nails or you may just remove the pattern from your nail too.

Once cleaned up here is the finished product...

This takes time and a good bit of polish, but the results are well worth the effort and with practise they only get better!

Hope this helps.

Dark Side of the Moon

Think week I was really struggling for ideas and my usual google search of nail art didn't bring up anything that caught my eye so I went to get myself a drink and the radio was on in the kitchen playing 'Pink Floyd - Money'.

That's when I thought, yeah that's what I'll do!

So I googled Pink Floyd, and most of the pics that came up were variations on the Dark Side of the Moon cover.(Shown below for those of you who don't know what it looks like)

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

The plan was to do the prism on one nail and the light and rainbow on the other nails, only problem being I painted it on my ring finger, so if I'd have done as I was first planning, the rainbow would have looked funny as it wouldn't have been coming off the prism at the right angle and that would have annoyed me greatly.

Cut to plan B, new idea was now to do the prism on all nails, after doing my fingers on my left hand I had a brain wave and decided it would be a good idea to write 'Pink Floyd' in their style writing on my thumb.

I did it and it looked really good. Slowly it started dawning on me that to look even I would now have to paint my left hand the same. The prisms took a while, especially getting the rainbows done.

 Then I came to my thumb. Now i'm ok at drawing simple patterns with my left hand, but as a rule I don't usually write with my left. I thought about it a bit, then just bit the bullet and had a go, after all I could have always rubbed it off and started again. I managed to do it 1st time with a LOT of time, patience and concentration. It looks different to my other thumb nail, but doesn't look awful.

I'm pretty happy with how this nail art turned out. It's the first time any of the male friends have been the first to 'like' it on facebook.

Now to see what work think of it :-s And to start thinking about ideas for next weeks art....

Outta This World Space Nails

Once again I headed to google for nail art inspiration and found Through the Wormhole: Quick Nebula Nail Art Tutorial . I though it was so effective I just had to try it myself. I used black as a base for mine (Barry M) then used 5 or six, if not more different colors including my Orly silver polish and some giltter in the dark patches.
I am not going to add a step by step for this one as I think the link I used is very easy to follow.
Here is how mine turned out.

Fireworks & New Year! Why didn't I think of that sooner?!?!?!

After last weeks leopard print nails (lots of good comments about them in work.), I was wondering what to do this week, but I just couldn't think of anything!

I kept thinking about it, then it hit me, it's new year so I googled new years and fireworks come up and it was like a spark, of course you get fireworks at new years! so I started thinking how to do it on nails.

I kinda decided my base colour would have to be dark as after all fireworks only tend to come out at night when it's dark. So I choose My darkest nail polish - Boots No7 Stay Perfect Nail Colour in 'Betty Blues'.

I gave my nails two good coats of this (after 1st applying a base coat).

Once this had thoroughly dried I got out my chosen colours 

Using one colour at a time started drawing 'firework' type shapes basically feathery curve strokes in random places on my nail. I used all the colours in one 'firework' on my thumbs, then used the pink and Orange as two different 'fireworks' on all my other nails. I paired both with the really sparkly silver.

Once they were all done I added a glitter top coat followed by a normal top coat making sure to seal each nail tip (by painting top coat along the nails edge). I also allowed each coat to dry before applying the next.
I was very happy with the nails as they were at this point.

I could have stopped here, but I decided to add a bit of 'bling' in the form of nail gems in pink and clear. I added then using a wooden pointed stick (orange stick / BBQ skewer, etc) and dabbing a bit of top coat to the back of them to affix them to my nails. Again allow these to fully dry before sealing the gems with one final top coat, for me Sally Hansen's No Chips Acrylic Top Coat is a must for this final layer. It's the best top coat I have found by far.

And that's it! Go out and party with your new year nails!