Pastel Water Marble

Hi friends!!! Long time no see =) I had a bad break on one of my nails this week so I wanted to let it grow out a bit before I subjected you to my nubs! Luckily, my nails grow like weeds so it only took a few days to get back to normal.

Since Easter weekend is upon us, I wanted to do a fun, spring-y manicure for you all today. I decided to do a water marble with some of my favorite pastel colors and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! I used China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet. The last water marble I did, a lot of people commented on how bright it was. That was because I always do my marbles on a white background. This helps the colors show up a lot better, since when the colors spread out on the water they become more sheer.

The one thing I don't like about water marbles (or nail art in general) is I can never seem to clean up my cuticles the way I would with a normal manicure. There always seems to be some sort of polish left behind, and no matter how much I scrub with my clean-up brush, they never seem to come completely clean. And then, my cuticles look wrecked from all the scrubbing I have done. Yuck! If anyone has any tips on how to clean up nail art better, please let me know =)

Anyways, here is my pastel water marble with Lemon Fizz, Lacey Lilac and Mint Sorbet. I did two colors of Wet n Wild French White Creme underneath and then did the marble on top of that. Please forgive the dryness, I swear it doesn't look that bad in real life =) Enjoy!!

What's your favorite spring manicure?

Holiday Water Marble

Hello my lovelies! Hope you are all having a nice Sunday so far. I haven't done a water marble in quite some time, so I figured I would do a Christmas themed one for you today! I don't know what it is this year, but I'm just not in the holiday spirit yet. Perhaps it's the unseasonably warm weather we've been having here in Cleveland (well, minus a few colder days) or maybe it's because we haven't had much time to decorate yet. Either way, I wanted to do a holiday manicure today to help get me into the holiday spirit!

I decided to use four colors in my water marble today: 2 greens, a white and a red. The four polishes that I used were Orly Red Flare, OPI Jade is the New Black, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Green with Envy. I had relatively few problems with bubbling this time around, so I'm pretty satisfied with the way my marble turned out. I had a pretty big flub on my middle finger, but it still looks decent overall, so I decided to show you all anyways =)

A lot of people strive for uniformity when doing water marbles. I do not. I think water marbles are way more fun when you do something a little different on each finger. It kind of reminds me a little but of ribbon candy or something =) Anyways, here is the water marble. I did one coat of Sally Hansen White On underneath and did the water marble on top of that. Enjoy!

So, did this water marble get me a little bit more in the Christmas spirit? Mehh, probably not. Will I start decorating today anyways? Yeah, I probably will. It's about that time =)

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekends and I will see you all tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by today!

A Water Marble and a Konad

Good morning everyone! It's been a week since my last post and I'm mad at myself! I really need to post more, for real! School is crazy this semester, I'm taking six classes and none of them are easy. Not even one cake class! It has been nuts, and I have been seriously bogged down with homework. However, I need to remember that doing my nails and blogging is actually a stress reliever so if I take the time out to do those things, I should be more productive with everything else, right? At least, that's what I'm going to tell myself!

First up today, I have a water marble for you! Water marbles are one of my absolute favorite things to do with my nails, and I have done a gazillion of them. Generally, they turn out pretty great but unfortunately, this one was a semi-fail for me. So why am I posting it? It still looks cool!

For this marble, I used three Misa polishes: Sorry, Just Can't Help It; Office Polish-tics; and Dirty, Sexy Money. They are all fantastic, dusty cremes and I thought they would be great for an end-of-summer to early-autumn marble. I absolutely adore Misa polishes, the application is phenomenal and the colors are amazing. However, they are just not ideal for water marbling. I tend to use thinner polishes for marbling, such as Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears or China Glazes, but I thought I'd give these a go! Well, though the colors looked great together, they bubbled horribly in the water! You can see in the pics below, especially on my right hand that my manicure looks like it has a case of measles...

Usually, I can eliminate bubbles in the water, and if one does happen to show up on my nail, a quick blow on the nails nine times out of ten does the trick to get rid of the bubble. This time it seems that the bubbles were unavoidable. So, although I love my Misa polishes, I do not think I will be using them again for marbling anytime soon. So, without further ado, my water marble fail!

L-to-R: Sorry, Just Can't Help it; Office Polish-tics; Dirty, Sexy Money

The left hand - not quite as many bubbles as the right hand

Ugh! Bubble city. Still, I like the patterns on my right hand better than the left. Bummer that it bubbled so badly.

So, there you have it. If anyone out there has any ideas on how to eliminate those bubbles, let me know! I would greatly appreciate it, because I really love this color combination. And for all of you wondering how in the heck to do a water marble, I hope to post a tutorial for you guys soon =)

Next up is a slightly less fail mani. Now who out there is on Pottermore? I am, of course! I was sorted into Ravenclaw and wanted to do a manicure for last Friday's Ravenclaw Pride day on Twitter. Blue and Bronze, baby! Now this manicure I absolutely LOVED.

I used OPI DS Fantasy for this manicure on all fingers except the accent finger. I am obsessed with DS Fantasy, it may be my favorite blue of all time. The DS Collection is OPI's "special" collection. It contains holographic and foil polishes that are a bit "higher end" than their normal line. DS Fantasy, while it is not a linear holographic polish, contains a teensy bit of the holographic powder in it. It's enough to really make it stand out. Isn't it gorgeous? The bronze that I used on the accent nail is OPI Sonata in Bronze from the 2004 Holiday Harmony Collection. I purchased this polish back when I worked at a salon in the mall, when OPI polishes were still $7.50! I stamped over the bronze with a Bundle Monster plate and DS Fantasy.

Hope you enjoy this one!

Love this blue so much!

Well, that's all for today! I vow to post at least every other day, if not more often, from now on! Thanks for reading!

-Jacqui