GuestPost - Wacie

Fun With Pink and Coral 

Hello, Secretary's Nail Art readers!
I am Stacie from wacie.com, and I am your guest blogger today.
I have mani for you that combines many nail art techniques to create one cohesive mani.

 For this look, I used Essie's Pink Glove Service and Tart Deco, Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer's Too Close to the Flame, OPI's Live, Love, Carnaval, and a nameless pink glow-in-the-dark polish I got at Rite-Aid. Each nail is topped with Dream Polish's Gem Glam top coat in the Melon Baller scent, and Essie's Matte About You matte top coat.

(The white spots are from the matte top coat)

As I mentioned, I employed many different styles for this mani.
All nails have a gradient done with Pink Glove Service and Tart Deco, but only one, my thumb, has the gradient alone and unfettered. The index finger has a coat of Too Close to the Flame under the gradient, while the pinky has it over the top. The middle two nails have the water marble done with Live, Love, Carnaval and Pink Glove Service. It's harder to see on some nails, but it is there.

Pink Glove Service is the workhorse of this mani, and I chose it because it's so sheer and so neutral that you can barely tell it's there. I definitely recommend a polish like this for everyone.

I used it here for all my negative-space needs, it watermarbles, and it's soft enough to work on every skintone.

Each nail also has a dose of the no-name glow-in-the-dark. I applied it at a different time on each nail, dependent on what nail art was done.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get a really strong glow. I'll definitely use more if I attempt this again.

This photo was taken in complete darkness.

Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquers are sold in their online shop.
You probably already know where to find OPI and Essie.

Thank you so much for guestposting for me Stacie! Be sure to check out her work over at her blog wacie.com. Preparing for life as a new mom is keeping me busy, and I am looking forward to be getting back to blogging and getting the hang of having a baby around.

Neon Watermarble

I really want to be a "Watermarble Witch", it sounds kinda awesome, and I hear Youtubers talk about it "like, all the time". This week alone I have seen 3 videos being posted where it has been mentioned. 

Totally crazy. 

Neon Watermarble using Opulent Essences - Lime and Opulent Essences - Orange 

It's been a year since my last meeting with watermarble, so it's about time I get back into it. 

I started out with one coat of Sinful Color - Snow Me White, then I prepped my skin with some Liquid Latex. I buy mine from Nail Artisan UK, (in case you are looking for a place to buy).

Whatever is #secretarysnailart up to now? @nail_artisan_by_alex - Magic Mask Liquid Latex from Nail Artisan and Sinful Color - Snow Me White

A photo posted by Dina Ramse (@secretarysnailart) on May 15, 2016 at 9:14am PDT

It looks strange, but it is Oh So Satisfying to peel it off the skin afterwards. Practically Zero clean up makes nail art so much more enjoyable.


In a small round container that I got my coconut jelly in from the Chinese Market. They are perfect for watermarble when doing one and one nail.

I alternated between dropping Opulent Essences - Lime and Opulent Essences - Orange in the container, before making a design and dipping my nails.

Neon Nail Art Mani using Opulent Essences - Lime and Opulent Essences - Orange from Taste The Rainbow Collection. 

That one time ... Watermarvel

I think it is important to report the "not so successful" attempts every now and then.
Specially when you can identify what went wrong in the process.

So this attempt started the same way as all the other:
Polish goes in water, spreads, drag needle over, dry over night.
Yet, it turned out quite different.

IsaDora - 179 - Winter Rose
W7 - 140 - Buff
ESSIE - Little Brown Dress

close up few minutes after it was made

15 h later, it looks like this

I could still make a nice manicure out of it, so it wasn't completely ruined, but it baffled me that it turned out so differently. As I hadn't had any failed attempts at all using this technique I wanted to find out what went wrong.
I asked the girls at Polish-aholics Anonymous on Facebook, and the suggestions ranged from water contamination, to temperature drops, and even air contamination. One suggested it might simply be the polishes I choose.

So I went to the scientific method, and worked on eliminating one and one of these theories.
By using the same polishes in the same order with new water, and with a lid, the problem still occurred. So it could not be air- or water contamination. Though, this was a very good bet.
As I had used the same water all week, there was a possibility that water contamination could be a factor. I would lift the decal out of the water, and make a new one right away, so the water was never changed. However this had not, and continued not to be the problem, so it had to be something else.

I then decided to use the same polishes but to swap out one of them. As I am not the biggest fan of IsaDora - Winter Rose, that was the polish I decided to swap out. This attempt had no errors and can be found following this link:

Vintage Wood - A watermarble adventure

I was twisting and turning on the decal. It wasn't much to work with, and it had gaps here and there. Some of it simply crumbled away when I took it out of the water.

 It's not my best work, hehe, but I made it, kinda, work.

Vintage Wood - A watermarble adventure

I think this post does not come as a surprise to any of you. Specially as it is another water-marble manicure. I have been practicing and practicing all week.
I was trying to identify a problem that occurred with one of my water-marbles, when I came upon this combo. I did a similar one, but was using IsaDora / Winter Rose for that one, and something strange happen to it, so when I experimenting to see if it was the polishes/water/temperature/air that was causing the problem, I used my new Barry M - Vintage Violet.

Instead of alternating every third, like I have done for a while, today I only added ONE drop of the Barry M - Vintage Violet. The rest of the water-marble was done using W7 - Buff, and ESSIE - Little Brown Dress. It really reminds me of woodwork, and I just can't say how pleased I am with this attempt. I have come so far with my watermarbeling decals this month.

The added dusky violet in this manicure lifts it up just that little.

Vintage Wood worked nails - water marbling

I will be uploading my failed attempt as well. So you can see what can go wrong when water marbling, and how I managed to make a mani out of it after all. 

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...