Hi everybody! It's been a week since I last posted but I'm back today with some nails I did recently. I did these nails over a week ago because last week I got my nails professionally done (just a simple french gel mani) for my sister's wedding over the weekend where I was the maid of honour. So these nails today are a filler until I take the gel off, which I may do this week because I'm not a massive fan of them.
This mani is just a simple blue dotticure using Blue Marlin by Ulta3 with a glitter accent by Moonstone Nail Polish called Star Queen Nebula from the September What's In-Die Box (which I never posted swatches of and I'm very disappointed in myself for but oh well, you'll eventually see them all when I use them in future manis). I believe the white dots were Lily White by Ulta3 also.
That's all for today! Hopefully I'll be back to normal nail art by the weekend if I can get this gel polish off safely without ruining my nails! Thanks for reading.
Hey everyone! Only ten more days left of the challenge; it feels like it's been going on forever and now we're in the section that's my least favourite because sometimes it's hard to force myself to be inspired by certain things. But I do have a few ideas so we'll see how they all work out.
Today's prompt is probably the second most ridiculous of them all (the first being 'inspired by a flag') but it's also easy because you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want to. My favourite colour is blue so I went with my favourite blue polish by Essie, Avenue Maintain and did a simple dotticure with Lily White by Ulta3.
It's a very classic and cute mani that will pretty much go with anything and you can easily change the colours up.
Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend, thanks for reading!
Hello everyone! Today's prompt is one of my favourite days because blue is my absolute favourite colour. And before I get any further I have to thank my mum for helping me pick this design for today, so thanks mum and look, here's your shoutout! Told you I would.
I've never done this design before so I was pretty excited to do it. I had started to film a tutorial for this as well after practising on a nail wheel but I found it was just too difficult to film because I was still working it out for myself. So maybe that will be a tutorial in the future sometime.
The lines aren't perfect and the size of the colours aren't all the same but I think I did a pretty decent job! I really enjoy the way it turned out. Much better than I thought it would anyway.
I used four Essie colours, from top to bottom:
After School Boy Blazer
Butler Please
Avenue Maintain
Bikini So Teeny
The blues just go really well together and it was easy to work with the same formula for each colour.
I can't wait to try this out with other colours!
That's all for today, check back tomorrow for violet/purple nails!
Hi everybody! Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I hope this tutorial makes up for it. When I decided to make tutorials, my best friend requested I do a water marble one and I finally got around to it. It was a lot harder to film than I thought so it's not the best but I'm happy to post it anyway. This post will be very wordy as I'm going to share what I've learnt over the past year when it comes to water marbling.
Unlike a lot of other people, I've never had difficulty with doing water marble designs. The only trouble I face most of the time is finding polishes that spread well together. I've found the best to use are Essie polishes and they must be new polishes as well. Old polishes never spread well so whenever you get some new polishes, try water marbling out and see how it goes! I tend to use polishes from the same brand as well as they're the same formula and sit nicely on top of each other.
Many other people insist on using filtered water, but I never have. I just use water straight from the tap and I'll either let it sit for an hour to become room temperature, or I'll put a dash of warm water in it to make it less cold and so that I can start using it straight away. Room temperature water is important though; the water shouldn't be too cold or too warm. Don't forget to tape around your fingers too, otherwise it's so messy and time consuming to clean up.
I use toothpicks to create the designs, but I know other girls use needles, pins or small dotting tools. Anything with a point is perfect to use as it creates sharp and straight lines. And remember to use only the point of it, don't dip the whole toothpick in. Another good point is after dragging through the polish, dip the toothpick (or whatever tool you use) slightly into the water before pulling it out. This just creates a neat point in the design and doesn't pull the polish up with the toothpick. And between each or every few drags, wipe the toothpick off otherwise the build up of polish ruins the design you're trying to create.
In the video, I created a few designs just to show the different outcomes. My personal favourite is the first design I did, which I learnt how to do thanks to this tutorial by Erinzi. She also has some great tips so check her post out too.
I generally only ever use two colours when I do water marble designs. That's just my personal preference though, but more colours work as well if they're the right consistency and spread easily enough. It's very important to work fast as well, the process in the video is sped up otherwise it'd go for about 20 minutes, but you should work fast to avoid the polish drying too much (which happens in the first one I do).
After putting your nail on the area you want and into the water, make sure to remove the extra polish because if you don't it will all get dragged up with the finger when you pull it out and ruin the design so don't forget that part!
As you can see, my design smudged a bit. That's because there were bubbles on the nails that were still wet when I applied the top coat. I haven't found a good way to avoid these just yet, except to let them dry properly. My camera battery was dying so I had to do it quickly. Also, when I remove my nail from the water, I shake it off gently and dab my finger on paper the get excess water off. I'll also sometimes blow on my nail to move the water or very, very lightly dab it with a cotton tip so that I don't damage the design.
I think that's pretty much it, I'm sure there are plenty of other tips I'm forgetting but I hope I've covered most of them. It's a time consuming process and takes a few goes to get it right, but if you're using new polishes with the right consistency (not too thick or too thin), room temp water and are working fast you should be able to create some successful water marble designs.
So check out the video below and let me know what you think! And don't be afraid to ask me any questions if you're having trouble, I'll be happy to help because water marbling is such a fun design and I love seeing everyone's posts on it.
Thanks for reading and watching!
Hello! Today's post is very simple as it's nothing too special or fancy. I see these dotted gradient mani's everywhere and I thought I would them a try as they're super easy, but definitely eye-catching. Blue is my favourite colour, so naturally I had to use blue polishes for this. I originally wasn't planning on using all Essie polishes, but it just so happened that the only blue Essie's I had, made for a perfect gradient mani.
The colours I used from bottom to top are:
After School Boy Blazer
Butler Please
Avenue Maintain
Bikini So Teeny
It's pretty ironic that I love doing dotticures because I'm not a huge fan of dotted designs on anything else. But I really love these nails, they're so fun and really stand out. Maybe I'll do more of these in the future, using one brand for all the polishes like I did with these.
That's it for today, hope you enjoyed this post!
I have to admit, after this mani, leopard print is growing on me. But only for nails, and in cute colours that are opposite to the generic leopard print. It's just a simple, fun design and with a coloured background and black and white print, it can pretty much go with anything. I never thought I'd like this design. Guess it just goes to show that you've got to try it out to really judge it.
The blue base is Let's Get Lost - Essence. When I first bought this polish, I used it on my toes and for some silly reason I didn't use Essence's 24/7 Base, which is amazing at preventing staining. I'm on my second bottle in only a few months. So because I didn't use it, it stained my toenails like crazy, and even the skin around them. I had to use a bi-carb soda (baking soda) paste to remove the stains. This time around, I used the base I should have and I'm hoping it won't stain when I take it off later. Otherwise this polish is just ruined for me.
Anyway, the black and white are my go-to black and white's which I've repeated enough in previous posts. I topped with Seche Vite and I'm sad to say that I think it might need thinning soon. It's becoming a bit too thick for my liking. Does anyone know any good polish thinners?
That's it for today! There should be some more posts up this week. Happy Monday everyone!
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I love this mani! I had the urge to do some watermarbling, but I didn't want to spend a long time doing it, so I chose to have it as an accent nail and use the same colours for dots over a white base. This photo was taken about a day or so after I did it, so there's some obvious wear happening on the tips and I realised I hadn't moisturised until after I'd packed up my little camera set-up so apologise for the damage and dry cuticles.
I used W7's White polish, the green is Misty Jade - Rimmel and the blue is Suzi Says Feng Shui - O.P.I.
I think I've realised that I love doing designs with a white base. I've done so many lately that I think I need to stay away from the white polish for a while. If I can.
Clouds! As I said yesterday, blue is my favourite colour and a few years ago my room was painted blue and I had full intentions of painting clouds onto them but I just couldn't see it working out, so here's some clouds on my blue nails.
I painted my nails with two coats of Models Own - Feeling Blue (I only have four Models Own polishes from when they're shipping to Australia wasn't the approximate $60 dollars it is now so I might never have anymore even though they're quite decent). I then used a dotting tool to make cloud-like shapes and while it was still wet, dropped some white flocking powder on it using tweezers. I wasn't going to use flocking powder until I realised it'd make them look fluffy like real clouds, so I'm happy with my choice.
I'm finally happy with one of the designs I've done so far in the challenge. I knew blue wouldn't let me down!
I will admit though, it did take me a few goes to get the cloud shape right, that's why there's only one on the ring finger because it was the second one after the thumb (which I didn't even take a photo of, oops).
Tomorrow is purple and I have a good feeling about that colour too!
Yesterday I went to high tea! It was really fun and the food was excellent! This was the mani I wore after two failed attempts at other ideas. I like how it turned out though and it was very simple, even if it is a bit mismatched.
The colours I used were:
Accent nail: Hottie - Sinful Colors (I feel uncomfortable referring to a nail polish as 'hottie' but it's a brilliant colour)
All other nails: Azure Martini - Savvy by DB
The flocking powder was from an ebay store that came with 11 other colours.
Overall I'm happy with this mani, I really wanted to involve the flocking powder because I hadn't ever used it properly, just tested it's wear for a day, so I'm glad I used it.
