Watermarble in Green

I loved playing around with the water marble, so when I sat there putting it on my nails, I wanted to keep practicing and make another manicure using the decal method for water marble. I am trying to use different techniques when dragging my needle over the design. I have seen some alternating on dragging up and down, so I tried doing that here. My design bled out a little creating an interesting look. I am much more pleased with this try, as it is more solid, with no large empty spaces like the previous one.

I was sticking to green for this design too, but I swapped out some of the colours.

The Green Watermarble - Just out of the glass, and patted dry

ESSIE - Mojito Madness
ESSIE - Navigate Her
Barry M - Lime Green

I had a little mistake on some of the tips, when adjusting the decals, and cutting them, and when I grabbed a polish to paint over, to make it blend in seamlessly... I grabbed the wrong polish. so the errors was corrected using ESSIE - School of Hard Rocks. Oops. Did not mean to do that.

Green Watermarble

Green Watermarble

I still think it all turned out well. To make it less obvious I grabbed ESSIE - School of Hard Rocks, and a dotting tool, and "went to town", by adding some dots here and there. I think it worked well.
You know, sometimes the coolest manicures starts with a mistake of some kind.

I wasn't quite happy with just the dots and the water marble, and was advised by some lovely ladies on Polish-aholics Anonymous Facebook group, to add Out The Door - Northern Light. So, I did just that, This is actually the second time I use the topcoat(!!) I have had it for a long long time, just never ended up using it. I think I overloaded it a little bit on the middle finger, but it all turned out very nice. I think I am falling in love with water marbling this way.

Northern Lights over a green watermarble

Northern Lights over a green watermarble

This is not the last time you will see watermarbeling on this blog. I got some cool ones coming up, so I hope you are all not too tired of my marble adventure.

An Essie watermarble

I wanted to experiment with water marbles, specially since I have been seeing so many of them in my feed recently. I wanted to go with green shades since I live in Northern Ireland, and it's all about green.

Essie Watermable starting point, still in the cup

As I wanted to have more control of each nail, I used the decal method. Which means that I did the marble as normal in the water, but instead of dipping my fingers in the water, I allowed it to dry completely over night, before sticking it to my nails.
This also allowed me to make more than one design, and rather spread it out when I was wearing them.

Essie Watermarble - Allowed to sit over night, picture taken before patted dry

I used a handful of polishes for this design, and they where all ESSIE polishes.

ESSIE - Navigate Her
ESSIE - Mojito Madness
ESSIE -  School of Hard Rocks
ESSIE - Turquoise & Caicos

Essie watermarble manicure - cut to fit, and after clean-up

As one of the nails didn't turn out the way I had planned due to bad positioning of the decal, I made a flower using NYC - Flat Iron Green. First I stamped using MASH 46, but it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I traced it with a brush, and made the flower a bit bigger, using an angled brush to make the petals the way i wanted.

Essie Watermarble manicure - with an accent, and added topcoat

I am quite pleased with the end result. A lot of work went into this manicure, even though it kinda look effortless...

Branches and Leaves

Or possible the title should have been:
- Hate the smudges, love the mani

It didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but I like the base colours together, and I think I am on to something. Maybe I should have tried to leadlight the leaves or something...

I still think ti was worth showing you all.

I did this mani this autumn, and since I have been in hiatus for so long now, I thought I should share with you, what I have had on my tips, while I was away.

For this manicure I used ESSIE - Navigate Her, and China Glaze - For Audrey, I stamped using Moyou London - Mother Nature Plate Collection 07, I used alternating colours for it, so on top of  ESSIE - Navigate Her, I stamped using China Glaze - For Audrey, and on top of China Glaze - For Audrey i used  ESSIE - Navigate Her. The branches are stamped using ESSIE - Little Brown Dress.

That would be me for this time, I hope you all are surviving the winter cold, and staying warm, moisturized and healthy. 

Jump to the Airport - mani

So there I am, finishes packed and ready to go to Spain. When I noitice something horrible. My nail polish has chipped!!! I don't want to be selfconcious on the entire trip, I want to be able to relax. So those nails had to be done. 

For this manicure I did something cool.

I made a decal!

I ended up using it on my thumb, I forgot how large the image was... Oh well. There is a first time for everything, and everyone. This was mine. I am no longer a decal-virigin. 

I used the Cheeky - Jumbo Plate - Tropical Holiday. It was the only plate I could use really. Tropical Holiday, I was going to Spain, ya know?!

How-to:

Select an image you want on your nails. Transfer it to your stamper. Fill in with colours using a fine brush or dotting tool, Let it dry for 10 min. Apply a generously amount of clear nail polish over, or the background colour of your choice. Let it dry for 10-15 min. Take it of carefully, and apply to wet/tacky polish on your nails. There you go!


Now, enough about decals. Over to the nails. Since I was kinda in a hurry, I forgot the usual step-to-step pics, but you get an idea.

Jump to the Airport - mani

The thumb is the decal I made. I used ESSIE - Navigate Her as base and ESSIE - Moijito Madness for the top of the palm tree and W7 - Buff for the stem
Iindex finger I used Barry M - Lime Green stamped a plane over and filled it in using Wet & Wild - Black Creme
Middle finger I used Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow, and stamped over using Barry M - Lychee with seashells
Ringfinger has Barry M - Acid Yellow as base with Barry M - Fuchsia stamped over with hibiscus flowers
Little finger is ESSIE - Navigate Her and a nail sticker with hipster glasses

Phuuu that is a long list of polishes.

I got to the Airport in time, and got to sit down there for a couple of minutes before take up. UK was raining like all hell was loose as soon as I got in the Airport, and when I landed in Spain, it had just stopped raining.
There was some tubulense on the trip, but all in all, it went good.


PS: If you are planning on taking EasyJet any time soon.. They are planning on denying all liquids on check-in luggage. Just FYI.

Carcassonne - nail art

This picture above here, might make you confused, do no fear. This is a nail related post. 

For those of you that follow me regularly, might remember that it was my birthday not long ago. My boyfriend got me a lot of stuff for my birthday (you can read what he got me in this blog-post), one of those things he got me for my birthday was Carcassonne expansions. Carcassonne is a fun little game about building castles and roads, and it's one of my favorite (board)games in the world. Next to Labyrinth, which is without a doubt my favorite. If you are into boardgames you should check it out.

PS: Maybe not get this specific expansion that is shown with the picture below, it's a bit too fiddly, I prefer the other expansions.

Carcassonne - The Princess & the Dragon

Example of Carcassonne in play.

So my boyfriend told me he wanted to do my nails for my birthday. We grabbed some acrylics, and polish and dived into it. This is not the first time he has done my nails, he did a Serenity (movie) manicure . In the previous mani, we did not use any acrylics, and he has been dying to show of his acrylic skills.

First challenge. He wasn't happy with my selection of green polishes. So I had to go ahead and mix them up until we got the shade we wanted. 2 drops of ESSIE - Mojito Madness and 3 drops of ESSIE - Navigate Her seemed to be the shade he wanted.

ESSIE - Mojito Madness and ESSIE - Navigate Her

4 nails on each hand got painted green, and the thumb was painted grey with MISA - Working Hard, Hardly Working. Stamping using Ciaté - Vintage Paint Pots

The backing of the tiles in Carcassonne and the Bundlemonster plate I used for stamping.

Once the nail polish was all dry we got the acrylics out.

I was sneaky and got some pictures while he was busy doing my nails. 

You can see he has placed out the tiles he was recreating next to him. 

After half an hour we had a break. This is what it was all looking like then. You can see the pieces taking form. It was getting dark outside, so sorry for the terrible pictures. 

He wanted to use more time on this, but I had to draw the line somewhere. He was keeping me busy while he was painting by feeding me white wine, and after a while it got nearly impossible to keep the hands still. 

I did dent my nails over night, so sorry for the rough look, but here are some pictures of them finished.

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

What do you think? Would you wear nail art inspired by a game? 

Let me know in the comment section below. 

Tri-polish colour blocking

Let's rock

some

colour-block!

For this manicure I used three polishes: Essie - Navigate Her, Essie - Mojito Madness (this was my go-to polish last summer), and China Glaze - Exotic Encounters. For the accent I used both a green and a black striper, rest of them only has the black striper. The original has a matte surface, but I decided to stay bright and happy with this.

I was inspired to do this after seeing a picture of a manicure featured in Teen Vogue, made by Madeline Poole from mpnails.com. See original post here. 

Back to my creation.

First I applied Essie - Navigate Her, to cover completely it took two coats.

Essie - Navigate Her

I then added tape on the lower half of the nail and used China Glaze - Exotic Encounter on the top part. 

The weather has not been the best for taking pictures, but I did my best with these. 

For the third step I took a large dotting tool, and added Essie - Mojito Madness on one side. Lastly I made an accent on the ring finger using an emerald green striping polish, and "framed" Essie - Mojito Madness, and then "framed" that again using a black striper. For the rest of the nails I only "framed" using the black striper.

Taken the day after. 

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I'm a bit late with posting this one, 3 hours according to UK-times. Sorry for that, but here it is.
It's the Cheeky Girls Challenge with Lacquer or Leave Her!

I have been in the philosophical corner lately. Ended up, at random, debating Descartes with a man I hardly know, whilst on my travels in Edinburgh , Scotland, previously this week. Hench the title of the post.
What do you think about the classical philosophical question? Give me your thoughts in the comments below.

It's time for CH50!!
I wanted to play this image up a little. Do something special.

How about doing a nail art using just one color family? That sounds like fun, right?
I pondered on this, long and hard. My big box o greens was pulled out, and I looked them over. Trying to figure which to match, how many, what shades to use...
Ended up with Essie - Mojito Madness, Essie - Navigate Her, and L.A. Color - Current.
After debating order, we all agreed on using L.A Color - Current as a base color.

I also did an accent using Essie - Mojito Madness over L.A. Color - Current, while I used Essie - Navigate Her, on the other nails. Stamped with the opposite color.

It needed 2-3 coats to be this even.

Adding some striping tape, to Jazz it up.

Going eco friendly. 

Want to see what out lovely Mishka over at Lacquer or Leave Her! has done with this image? Head over, and follow this link!

J is for Jungle

I made a Jungle mani  last year, and I was organizing my stash when I discovered that I had a few untrieds in my green box. I grabbed them out, and played around with them a bit on a swatching wheel before deciding on what to do. And since I stopped on the ABC Challenge on "I" before the holidays, I decided to pick it up again.

Camo.

ESSIE - Navigate Her
Dearlee - 27 Sea Green (Born Pretty Store)

The idea on the swathing wheel

Seagreen and accent with Navigate Her.