Is It or Isn't It?

Here's a quick and simple mani, but the question is, is it a sponge gradient or a funky french?

This was done with a base coat of Gelous, two coats of Wet N Wild I Need a Refresh-mint, a coat of SV (I almost always seal nail art layers with SV so that I can rescue myself if my mistake isn't too big), the tips are Wet N Wild Bite the Bullet sponged on using a piece of a sponge roller, and then two coats of SV.  This is my first time sponging, and I'm pretty happy with 90% of the results.  That middle finger there looks a bit too solid of a line, but the other 9 fingers look great! 

Both of these polishes are in the Wet N Wild Megalast line and have "pro" brushes.  I'm not sure I really like them.  First, I had to trim a few strands on the I Need a Refresh-mint but that's probably more about the fact that it's a cheap brand than brush shape.  The bottle neck is too narrow, you have to be careful putting the brush in and there's no wiggle room for the plastic part, it seems like such an odd packaging method.  Also, I don't have a lot of experience with brushes shaped like this, so I may find them difficult just for that.  I find I press a lot harder with these so I am really bad about leaving gouges in my coats.  Total BLECH!

I'm really happy with the sponging method and I can't wait to try a true gradient now!  I used a tiny piece of sponge roller I tore off and I tapped a fairly dry brush to it.  I tried make-up sponges and picking up polish from a palette, but this is the only method that transferred polish for me or left me with a sponging and not a stamped looking mess.



Keep watching, my hair is currently up in pin curls I rolled using that new tool.  I'll be reviewing it soon!

Oh Say Can You See

This post may be awfully written since I'm dying of a migraine and our air conditioning is out when it's 103* and rising, but it's time sensitive so it's got to get done.


Woohoo!  While writing that first sentence a friend came over and swooped my kids away to A/C so at least that's a load off my migraine.  Let's see how this goes.

For the last few weeks I have been really excited to do some sort of themed manicure for The 4th of July and have been thinking on it.  I had a lot of ideas, and in the end I decided my freehand still looks a bit too amateur a lot of the time, I'm short on SV to do a tape mani the way I'd like, and my stamping skills and polish selection aren't up to the task yet. So water marbling it was!

I've been asked a lot how to do this, so I'm hoping to do a tutorial to add to the plethora of water marble tutorials available next week when I do a request for friend, but for now, you're going to get a few process pics and the end result.

Please pardon the awful color, my main point was to show the design and my processing computer died yesterday, so I tried to fiddle with these in some freebie program on my media server. After spending most of the day working on this post, I decided showing you what designs I did was more important than getting the colors right.

 I really hate posing nails like this, but there aren't terrific options with water marbling where you really want to show off as much of all 10 nails with as few frames as possible.

Polishes
Base Coat:  Gelous
Underwear:  Savvy French White White
Marble:
Wet N Wild I Red a Good Book
Wet N Wild Blue Moon
Savvy Fre
nch White White
Glitter Coat:  Wet N Wild Hallucinate
Top Coat:  Seche Vite

On my right hand I tried to use the Hallucinate in the marble too, but it didn't work well.  Putting it as one of the first colors caused it to dry before I could marble and putting toward the end and my solid color drops weren't spreading so the glitter ended up mostly just being lumps under the polish.  I was bummed because I wanted streaks like my last marble instead of all over, but such is life!  The biggest difference it made though is you can see the colors on my right hand are more primary, on the left, for some reason the white interfered more with the red and blue and I ended up with more pastels.  But the right also made a bunch of purple, so in the end, nothing ended up being a BRIGHT red, white, and blue as I planned.

I also wanted to try out nail polish jewelry, making a ring that would match my manicure!

This was HARD to water marble.  I have some ideas for next time, which will be happening, because the polish and adhesive never set thanks to the A/C going out.  I managed to keep it on well enough until the end of the night, then I got home and it fell apart.  It'll be taking an acetone bath soon.

Some process pics for you:

Galaxy Nail Art

I've had galaxy nails on my to-do list for awhile now, but I was putting it off until my nails grew long enough to have enough space to get a decent "picture" in.  After being inspired by all the amazing swatches at Nouveau Cheap's epic galaxy nail battle, I decided two things:  #1 this would be another epically (spell check does not like that but dictionary.com tells me that's the proper spelling of the adverb tense) long manicure if I did it on all 10 nails, #2 my ring finger nails were long enough.  When you add 1 + 2 you get:

I ended up using several of the same colors she used without even realizing it, but I did intentionally use one my many China Glaze Riveting's inspired by what appeared to be her boyfriend's use of it and my love of it. The one thing I changed up was instead of making the stars by dotting a light polish, I used my dotting tool to pick up and put down the large hex glitter out of my Revlon Whimsical.  I love the idea of an old sponge roller too.  I found my makeup sponges are so absorbent that they are worthless for nail art and I'd been looking for an alternative that was cheap.  This was perfect since I had several I don't use anymore and it really works amazingly!

I used LA Looks Black Velvet as the base of the nail.  This is quickly becoming my favorite nail art black.  Perfect formula, it spreads perfectly, can be used in one coat for small art, and is only $1.  For the galaxy I used:


 (in this general order, one or two may have been switched around)

Wet N Wild Lavender Creme
Wet N Wild Red Red
China Glaze Riveting
Wet N Wild Blue Moon
Revlon Mysterious
Zia Unnamed off-white frost with silver sparkle
Revlon Whimsical


I then covered it with a light coat of Petites Stardust.  Careful, this one surprisingly has enough coverage that a regular coat will be too much glitter.  Note the difference in coverage between the right and left pictures.  Otherwise I'm really impressed with how these came out on my first try!  For the rest of my nails I used Wet N Wild Everybody Loves Redmond.  


I was not happy with the red, it was just too orange, but I didn't have anything better.  But the next day I hit up Rite Aid's Wet N Wild deal and got Burgundy Frost which worked perfectly!  I wish I had this exact shade in a creme though, I didn't want the distraction of frost or shimmer or glitter or anything.  I really feel like accent nails with nail art needs a complimentary but subdued color on the rest of the nails to allow them to stand out.

In the end, I love this art and can't wait to try it again with other colors. Also I loved that both my husband and my older daughter knew what it was right off the bat! What do you think about galaxy nails?  Have you tried it?

Water Marble Mini Me

The day after I did my first water marble mani on myself, my youngest came down with a fever and we were stuck on the couch for the day.  She's a total diva and more into the beauty stuff than I, so why not take advantage of her lethargy to give her a really neat mani!

Base of NK Really White

Water Marble with NK Really White and Crayola Grape Raisin, Blueberry, Green Apple, Orange, and Bubble Gum

Top coat 2 coats of SV 

Unfortunately her manis don't last very long because she's a dedicated picker, but she enjoyed it while it lasted!

Girl Scouts Rock the Mall!

In addition to being addicted to nail polish, I'm a Daisy Girl Scout leader.  This year marks 100 years of Girl Scouting in the US and this past Saturday our council tried to put off a huge sing along on the National Mall with 200,000 Girl Scouts.  I say "tried" because the general consensus seems to be they failed miserably and it was an embarrassment to the Nation's Capital.

But anyway, I did a special pedicure just for the day!

I have awful feet, I know.  I'm an avid gardener among other feet uglying activities that I do barefoot or in flip flops pretty much always.  But I'm working on them!  The blue is Revlon Mysterious and the green is Wet N Wild Fast Dry SaGreena the Teenage Witch (I love the Fast Dry names!) with the painting done in NK Really White.  I have shown these off to EVERYONE!  I cannot draw for anything, so I totally impressed myself with these, especially the right one!  And I just adore these two colors together, they're definitely going to make more appearances as a pair around here.

My Girls trying to keep cool

Simple Bling

One of the things I've learned on this new fingernail polish journey is how much layering really can effect a polish.  I'd often see these in-the-bottle-gorgeous chromes and glitters, bring them home, and be so disappointed. Well guess what?  It turns out that layering them over other colors has a massive effect!  Here's 1 coat of Sally Hansen HD DVD over 1 coat of Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris and topped with 1 coat of SV.

It's a blue/purple duo-chrome with an ultra-fine glitter/shimmer. 

I tried to get the two colors in the pic, but it was hard even though it shows up very well inside or outside.  You can see the purple at the top of my pointer finger.  This was easy to put on, a little thin, but not too bad.  I had it peel back after a very long shower and fixing it with a touch-up brush was quick and easy, which always bodes well for the formula.

Something This Way Nautical Comes

Thursday I thought I'd try a sponged gradient.  It failed.  My base was already on in China Glaze's Riveting and I had Revlon's Mysterious out as one of my gradients, so it was time for a quick change of plans.

I ended up with this funky french that reminds me of something nautical.  I've been trying for days to put my finer on what it is, but it's just not coming to me.  But between them and my homemade strawberry-lemonade, I felt like a fancy lady of summer!