Blue / Grey Marble Nail Art

Today, as always, I have a simple design to show you all. There's nothing special about this design and I actually wrote this post once before but it didn't save or publish and I lost it all, so I'm a bit annoyed and therefore this one will really be just a short and simple post. 

I did a simple water marble design on the accent nail and used some bunched up cling wrap to blot the grey polish onto the blue polish. Those polishes are Bestival Blue by Rimmel which is quickly becoming my new favourite blue polish and Impeccable Greys by Maybelline.

That's all for today, thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 20 - Water Marble

I absolutely love water marbling but I don't do it often enough because it's messy and I'm lazy. But as the prompt calls for it today, I picked a few Essie polishes and went to work. This time though I decided not to do my usual design and instead went with dropping the polishes anywhere in the water (as opposed to the normal bullseye) and swirling them around till I got a pattern I liked. As you can it was a bit hit and mess with that technique but I think they still look really cool and it was nice to do something a bit different!

The patterns on each nail kind of remind me of planets and I absolutely love that!

- Melissa.

OPI Water Marble

Hello lovelies,

So it's been quite a while since I last did a water marble design as the last one I did was for the 31DC2014 (check here) so I thought it was about time I did a new one, especially considering I recently got three brand new OPI polishes (and we all know how much I love water marbling with OPI, so much so that I think another blog post probably has this title already). 

The three polishes I used were:
Pamplona Purple
Dutch Tulips
Samoan Sand (which mostly went sheer in the water but I wanted to break up the colours)

I absolutely love how these turned out! I'm so damn happy with them and I can't believe it's been over two months since I last marbled!

(PS I'm trying out a new white background, opinions? I'm not sure if I love it or not!)

That's it for today's post! I'll be back again soon with another.

Thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

31DC2014: Day 20 - Water Marble

Hey lovelies! As you can guess, I looove water marbling so I was very pleased with today's prompt and knew it'd be a breeze. It didn't even take me a lot of time to pick polishes either. I used three Essie polishes because they work best for me even if they are a little bit older, as long as they aren't thick or slightly gloopy, they'll work.

The polishes were:

Devil's Advocate

Peach Daiquiri

Mojito Madness 

They make a lovely combination and I'm so very happy with how they turned out. Although I don't know what's going on with the bottom of my ring and middle finger nails, I think the tape pulled the design a bit, but despite that it's one of my best yet, I also branched out and used three colours which isn't something I tend to do when I water marble.

I could do water marbling forever and always be so happy with the result. I think I need more Essie polishes to do more combinations!

My First Blogiversary!

Hello there lovelies! Today's post is very special; as you can tell from the title it's been one year since my first post on this blog. I wanted to take the time today to post about my nail blogging and personal life experience over the past year (please note that I will be getting quite personal), talk about my future blog plans and just say a big thank you to everyone. And of course, I'm recreating the first mani I ever blogged about.

This past year has been a bit of a whirlwind experience for me both online and in real life. Before I started blogging about it I really loved nail art. Every week I would check out various blogs like ChalkboardNails, MyAwesomeBeauty, ThePolishAholic, and a lot more. Everyone in the nail art community inspired me to want to try to do my own nail art, to recreate theirs and to want to show it off. My friends and family were also an influence as well because I loved having new nail designs to show them whenever I saw them; they were very supportive of me and inspired me to start a blog and study to become a Nail Technician. So I thank them for always supporting me, especially my mum who has to deal with me running up to her whenever she comes home to show her the nail art I've done that day. A big thank you goes to both my mum and my dad as well for putting up with the nail polish and acetone smell over the past year. I know it annoys them even if they don't say it haha.

A lot of good and bad things have happened in my personal life this past year and sometimes they've affected my blogging. About two weeks before I started my blog I had spent the night in hospital due to a kidney stone and dehydration. It was the worst I've ever physically felt in my life, I was exhausted and in pain and wasn't allowed to eat or drink in case I needed surgery, but something that stuck with me was two of the nurses commented on my nails and told me how much they loved the colour and that they looked like gel polish. As tired and drained as I was, it made me happy that they liked them. About a week after my stay in hospital that I was also diagnosed with PolyCystic Ovaries Syndrome (PCOS) and that was a real kick to the gut. But eventually I took it in my stride and realised I just needed to deal with it and I should consider myself lucky because I don't have such severe symptoms like other sufferers do. However, it was a lot to take in within such a short amount of time so naturally I did feel quite down about both those illnesses. I was also unemployed for nine months last year which, to put it lightly, really sucked. It was horrible but I made it work and knew something would come along eventually. And it did! I started working in October at a local medical clinic and I couldn't be happier about it. I really lucked out in getting to work in such a great environment for and with such lovely people.

So life started to pick up after I found a great job and was earning my own money. There were a few days and weeks where I would be quite down due to my depression and therefore didn't blog as much as I normally would be, and you all know how much I've apologised for those times. I wanted to do nothing more than blog regularly, but I found it hard when I could barely get myself out of bed for the day. But I soldiered on and hopefully I made up for it okay. The only time I've found myself genuinely not wanting to blog was when my dog passed away. It was such an awful week of trips to the vet, not being able to sleep, trying to give her medication and watching her get slightly better and then much worse. That week made me realise what parents go through when their children are sick. I cried on and off for about nine hours the day we put her down. It was one of the most devastating things I've ever had to go through and honestly, I'm still not over it. But I eventually came back with some of my favourite nails I've ever done. They were simple and lovely and were a little dedication to Maggie.

I know I'm talking a lot about personal stuff, but before I'm a blogger, I'm an actual person with a real life and sometimes it gets in the way of this blog, which I'm sure other bloggers can understand. I'm also not afraid to share some stuff that happens to me, I'd rather be personal than an anonymous unknown person. And just so you know, I'm currently in quite good health and it's improving each week.

Everything in the past year has gotten me to where I am today though and that leads me onto my future plans as a blogger. As you all know, I've started making YouTube tutorials and I'm very happy I made that decision. I love it, despite the technical problems I sometimes have. But it's very rewarding to get positive feedback on them and watch the views of them go up. My aim now is to post at least one video a week, whether that happens straight away or in a few weeks is up to how many ideas I have. So expect a tutorial at least once a week. I also have future plans to post more about beauty. I already do my monthly favourites (I skipped July for those playing at home, sorry about that) which includes things other than nail related products. I would love to get into doing lipstick swatches and reviews but that won't happen until after September when the 31 Day Challenge ends (spoiler alert, I'm doing that challenge again). But I will post about all of that before any of it actually happens.

I decided for this post, that I'd recreate the first mani I ever did for this blog, a splatter and water marble combination. I wasn't happy with it when I posted it, but it's now nice to look back on it and see how much I've improved, especially with water marbling.

I used three of the new Maybellie Color Show polishes I posted about a few days ago, Pink Boom, Babe It's Blue and Cool Touch. I think I've come quite a long way since that first post.

I'm so extremely happy I started this blog, I don't know what I would be doing with my spare time if I hadn't. Who knows where I'd be without this blog and nail art. I love it all, I really do. So thank you to all those who take the time to read my blog posts. Thank you to everyone who follows me here, and on Bloglovin, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I am forever grateful that people enjoy reading my posts and looking at my nails. I never knew a simple hobby could become something like this, something that gives me a purpose and motivates me to try new things and step out of my creative comfort zone. 

Special shout outs go to my mum for letting me ramble about the new polishes I've bought and putting up with my constant talk of nail art, to my sister for messaging me whenever there's a nail polish sale on and for being the first to inspire me to study the course, to my best friend Tay for allowing me to always talk about how my nails match my outfit for the night and for supporting my decision to make tutorials, to my other best friend Tree who puts up with my constant frustrated messages about my nails and letting me ramble about them and to Renee for recognising me by my nails that one night (she knows what I mean).

Thank you, thank you, thank you to each and every person that's ever read my blog. You all mean the world to me and I'm happy to share my nail art with you. I look forward to another good nail art year! Thank you for reading.

Love, 
Melissa.

Water Marble Tutorial

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! 

OPI Water Marble Nails

Hello! Today I have another water marble design for you. I recently got some new OPI polishes so once again I had to do a water marble while they were still so new and fresh. I only used two out of the three polishes I had gotten though as two of the colours turned out pretty similar when watered down so it would have looked a bit funny. 

The two colours I used were Did It On 'Em and Thanks A Windmillion. 

Two weeks ago when I did an Essie water marble design I said it was the best I've ever done, but now I think these are the best I've ever done. They're both pretty much the same, in the way I did the pattern and how I dipped my nail in, but I think I love this colour combo more than the navy and purple one. I want to do water marbling forever! 

I'm just very happy with this one and I love doing these designs. I know everyone has a love/hate relationship with watermarbling but mine is a love only one and I've never had any real difficulties with it except some colours not working together so I guess I'm quite lucky.

That's all for today, so I hope you enjoyed this post! Have a lovely weekend everybody!

Navy and Purple Watermarble

Hello lovelies! Apologies for my slight absence once again. I had a much busier working week than normal and instead of my usual one or two days, I worked four days. So I was very tired and exhausted which left me with no energy to even paint my nails, let alone do some nail art. But today I woke up refreshed and happy and decided to do some watermarbling.

If you follow me on Instagram (or if you see the feed in my sidebar) you'll have noticed that I finally got some new Essie nail polish. I ordered them through OzSale and pretty much everything you get from that site takes weeks and weeks to arrive. So I was very happy when they finally did come just at the end of May. The two colours in this mani are my favourites from the five that I got. I love a good navy and dark purple polish. They may even have made it into my top 10 polishes (is that be a post that anyone would like to see? Because I'm considering it).

This is by far the best watermarble I have ever done (next to a red and white one I did for Christmas day to make candy cane designs, but never got around to taking photos of, such a wasted opportunity...). I am so freakin' proud of this! Usually I only watermarble the two middle fingers and then do dots or gradients on the other three but I only ever do a full hand when I looooove how it's turned out.

Despite some bubble marks and a few little flaws I really am truly proud of it. It's designs like this that turn out sooo well that make me remember why I love doing what I do and I can't stop staring at them! I'm very, very pleased.

The colours are: After School Boy Blazer and Bahama Mama.

And some good news is that I think I've figured out how to use my new light box properly! It takes a bit of fiddling around with the background colours and lighting set up but it turned out great and I couldn't be more pleased about it.

That's for today, hopefully I'll be back in the next few days! Have a good long weekend (if you're in Australia except Western Australia) and stay safe!

Holographic Gradient + Watermarble

It's been a while since I did a normal post that wasn't part of my Inspired By... series so I thought I would post a mani I did a week or two ago when I was feeling creative. I used two China Glaze holographic polishes called Not In This Galaxy and Sci-Fly By. These are the only China Glaze polishes I own but I definitely want some more, they were easy to use and the colours are great. The only mistake I made with this polish was being lazy with photographing them and therefore not getting a good shot in any sunlight, but it's still a great mani no matter how holographic it looks or not.

Gradients and watermarbles are my favourite combo to do together because even though you're using the same colours on the same white base, the payoff is different for each style. With the gradient it took a while to build up to the opaqueness you'll see in the photos and of course with the watermarble the colours are toned down because they're watered down. Some people might hate that, but for some reason I love it because it gives a different perspective of the colours in the one design!

Like I said, the photos aren't the best but they show of the mani well enough. I mean look at the difference between the blues, I just love it. My favourite thing to do when wearing holographic nail polish is shine my phone's torch on it and just stare at how pretty it is, does anyone else do that? Or is that just me?

Another Essie Watermarble

Today I have an Essie watermarble to show you all. I recently got four new Essie polishes so I had to do a watermarble with them. In this particular design I used Go Overboard and E-Nuf is E-Nuf. I had a whole other plan for this design, which included chevron but that went completely wrong and I redid the the middle and ring finger about three times more saying 'screw it, I'll just watermarble them all'. So I think I need more practice with chevron.

But despite all the mess up, I think this is my best watermarble yet (despite the ring finger which dragged with top coat), there aren't any bubbles or lumps and I'm very, very proud of this one. I've never been awful at watermarbling but I've never been this good either. So I'm happy with how it turned out, and I'm slightly surprised at how well it went.

Hope everyone has been good, sorry for being such an awful blogger still.

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Dots and Watermarbling

I think I've titled a previous post very similar to this, but I can't think of what else to call this one because they're very much alike. Anyway, I quickly did this mani today because I was feeling creative and hadn't done watermarbling for a while so I was craving to do one!

The purple is Manic Panic - Australis (which I picked up from K-Mart for two dollars last week!) and the green is Misty Jade - Rimmel. The white is my new favourite white, White On - Sally Hansen.

(Please ignore my bad cuticle area on my middle finger, I used PVA as a base and it started to pull away when I moisturised)

But I'm very happy with this mani, it's cute and bright and I love doing designs like this! I hope everybody has a lovely weekend, I'll be back with a mani on Sunday or Monday.

Essie Watermarble

If you follow me on instagram you'll have seen that I recently got a few Essie polishes, two which I purchased and another two that my best friend got me for Christmas. So I thought it would be a good idea to do some watermarbling with them because they were so new and would work so well.

I've just realised my skin tone is different in those photos but oh well. The nail polish colours are similar enough that you get the idea. The colours used were: Geranium, Avenue Maintain and Bond with Whomever.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately! I've still just been so uninspired and apathetic, and I've been trying to finish getting Christmas presents sorted and what not so I just haven't had a lot of time to actually sit down and do some nail art. My nails have grown a lot in the past two weeks as well and I was going to file them down due to curling but they seem to have fixed themselves for now so hopefully they continue to grow as good as they have been!

Nails for my Nana (+ some updates)

Over the weekend I visited my nana to help celebrate her 80th birthday, so I did my nails for her and she loved them. She was really excited about them actually. I posted these on instagram on Saturday night and completely forgot to do this post when I got home on Sunday, so here it is.

The colours I used for the watermarble were Liberty - W7 and No.5 - Miki (Bright Nails collection) the base for the numbers is Misty Jade - Rimmel.

The numbers weren't the neatest and I'm not sure I loved the watermarble on my pinky, but I did really love this mani. My nana means a lot to me and I'm really glad she liked it. 

Updates:
As you may be aware, I'm very slack at updating this blog. Lately I've just felt really apathetic and uninspired, I've also been getting more headaches and migraines than normal so I'm not in the mood to be inhaling chemicals when I've got one, so I'm really sorry about how slack and absent I am. 

But despite all that I really am going to try make December a good mani month. Even though November was technically my 'no-buy month' I ended up buying about six or seven nail polishes and one nail care item. I honestly couldn't resist all the good deals at Priceline. So I'm hoping to resist buying anything in December, I think I'll be able to do it this time.

And finally, anyone who knows me well will know that I'm not a huge fan of Christmas, the only thing I like about it really is the candy canes. I don't know why I don't like it that much but I can just never get into the Christmas spirit. However, I am going to try to do at least one Christmas mani a week until Christmas day. I do have some ideas in mind, so hopefully that'll be the push I need to become a Christmas fan by the time it rolls around. I'm aiming to do at least two manis a week, one Christmas, one normal. I also sometimes do NOTD swatches on my instagram so be sure to follow me there for some extra stuff.

Let me know any ideas for Christmas designs you'd like to see or other designs in general! I need all the inspiration I can get this month. Hope everyone is having a good week!

Blue/Purple/Pink Gradient under Watermarble

If you follow me on instagram you'll notice I posted this over the weekend. I was just too excited to wait to show everyone. I was inspired by this tutorial by Erinzi. I've seen her do this a few times recently and I'd always wanted to give it a go. There were a few mess ups, like on my index finger, but I really like how it came out and I think I'll definitely keep trying this because it's so simple and I never thought to use a not so opaque polish in watermarbling the way her tutorial shows.

I didn't really like the way the gradient came out and that's when I decided to follow Erinzi's tutorial.

I used Nail Bibs for my watermarbling, they make clean up so much easier and they're less hassle than using sticky tape. Plus they're reusable if put back onto their backing and treated well. You can find them here. They're cheap too and when I ordered mine the other month they arrived within about a week, which is super quick for international shipping.

I used three colours from the Miki Bright Nails collection I posted about in my haul and the black is Onyx Rush - Maybelline.

I'm hoping to get a few posts out in the next week, so look out for them!

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Watermarble and Dots

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.

31 Day Challenge: Day 20 - Watermarble

So I love watermarble designs and I've never had too much trouble doing them, which is why I love them. Also because they can look absolutely amazing. The hardest part for me today was picking colours, I went through about six different combinations before I settled on these two colours, both by Revlon, the green is Wind Fall and the orange is Mock Snob.

The green didn't turn out as bright as it is when normally used on it's own and once again the photos don't do the colours justice anyway. Wind Fall has a slight shimmer to it but it doesn't show too well when used this way. I'm happy with how this turned out, even though the green isn't as vibrant as I'd like (I think it's just such a thin polish that it wasn't opaque enough with only one drop each time), but the colours go well together and reminds me of some type of lolly.

Not much else to say about these nails except that I think these are the best watermarbles I've ever done, so I feel like I'm improving which is great!

Today was the end of the 'patterns' section of the challenge. The last section is 'inspired by' which may be difficult but I've tried planning some designs so we'll see if it all works out. See you tomorrow!

Splatter and Watermarble

Welcome to my first post!

It's not the best but everybody's got to start somewhere.

I'm unhappy with how the watermarbling turned out, considering I know I can do it better, but I made the mistake of not properly checking how the polishes worked together before committing to the colours on the splatter. 

The colours I used were:
Purple: Grapetini - Savvy by DB
Red/Orange: Big Hair, Big Nails - OPI
Yellow: Unicorn - Sinful Colors


It's basic and simple, but I'm happy with the splatter, so that makes up for poor watermarbling I was too frustrated to fix.

Over the next few days I'll be posting a few photos of designs I've done in the past before I decided to start a blog, just to get going and to give me time to plan future posts!