Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Waterless Water Marble


Hi guys! As you may know I’ve been doin quite a bit with acrylic paints lately. You may remember the zombie nails I did for Halloween where I mixed the paint for the background.  I’ve mixed paints for a couple of other things as well such as the pink ribbons for my Breast Cancer Awareness mani. Well when I was mixing the paints I happened to notice that it actually takes a good bit of mixing before the colors really come together which brings me to this mani. I also noticed how it kind of looked like marbling. 


How many have trouble with water marble manis? I mean, really, its pretty tricky to get the hang of. And then you add in all the little annoyances such as tape or bubbles, trying to get the design right and not being able to get it or the polish drying too quick. Seriously, unless you’re Colette from My Simple Little Pleasures (who actually really inspired me in the nail art ways) water marble can be super hard and super frustrating! I am, if nothing else, lazy and a huge fan of the easy way lol. 

So here we go!
What you’ll need:
Acrylic Paints in whatever colors your heart desires

Something non-porous to put the paint (I’d recommend either paper or something flat and plastic)

A paint brush if you’d like (doesn’t matter what size, shape or type)

How to do it:

Step one: Pick the colors you like. For this I used  Too Blue, Purple Iris, New Shamrock and Magenta Brilliant. All by Apple Barrel, all 57 cents at my local WalMart store. What cheaper and easier? Yeah I’m down for that lol.
Step two: Drop dollops of color onto your paper or plastic or whatever the heck you are using. I did purple on the bottom and randomly dropped the other three on top. Swirl around til you are happy with how it looks. Don’t swirl too much! 

Step three: Just like water marbling, you will dip your finger nail down into the paint. Don’t worry about taping, or trying vaseline or anything else. It’s easy to clean off. If you don’t like it just dip again! That easy, really. You can also add paint to the nail with the brush though its more of a muted effect (see middle finger). 


Step four: Let it dry. Now this isn’t polish. It doesn’t take forever and a half to dry. The paint does dry matte but you can change that if you would like.

Step five: Topcoat the hell out of it. Seriously. Wrap your tips like crazy and make sure all the paint is covered by topcoat as acrylic paint will come off with water. 

Step six: Clean up! I left the paint on in most of these pics just so you see how messy it is. Don’t avoid it, enjoy it. Let it remind you of fingerpainting as a kid lol. Really once your top coat is dry just go wash your hands with soap and water makin sure to rub the paint. It comes right off (it took me about 2 minutes max to get all the paint off that I didn’t top coat over).


Do you remember back to my Try It On Tuesday water marble? That took hours and I still wasn’t happy with it. This took less than 10 minutes to do. It’s cheaper, acrylic paint goes a long way. It’s easier than tryin to hurry, hurry, hurry before the polish dries.Oh yeah, it’s a lot more fun! 

A few things to note:
Miss a spot when dipping but don’t want to dip again? Use the brush and just add a tiny little bit. Blend or not it’s up to you. 
You can also use the brush to put the paint directly on your nails, you just don’t get all the swirly effects vibrantly.
Acrylic paint is less durable on your nails than polish, topcoat is very important! I type all day and I do have a little tip wear and a few chips from where I didn’t wrap my tips as well as I should have.
Its not all super thick like polish is and it all lays flat. A huge plus for me!

So what do you guys think? Will you try it? 

Here are all the pics:
Left thumb my favorite nail




Left ring finger my third favorite nail


Middle right, my second favorite nail



They are a lot more vibrant in real life, for some reason my camera doesn't like this mani lol. Let me know what you think in the comments! 
As always, thanks for stopping by :)

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Sinful Colors "Love Nails" *Super pic heavy!!!*

Do you ever have the perfect color and it just refuses to photograph well? Like it's so gorgeous that you absolutely can't stop staring at it and you dread when it comes time to take it off? Yeah, that's what's goin on here. 

I seriously tried super hard to get some decent pics for you guys. If you hang around the facebook page then you've already heard this lol. I finally managed to get some decent pics though. 

I still don't think I managed to completely get fantastic color accurate pics of this color but you definitely can't say I didn't try!
Inside under florescent light:

Outside in natural light no real sun:










Outside with flash:
Inside with direct light:






In the car with just the car light, it really shows more of the colors and just looks really cool lol. You can really see the green/gold/blue here:




More:












Honestly none of these are completely color accurate. No matter what I do, I just can't get it :( If you don't have this polish I'll do my best to describe it.....It's metallic blue that is incredibly vibrant, it has flashes of other colors but I wouldn't call it a duo chrome. All these pics are 3 coats each. It's pretty shear but I don't think it would look better with undies. The formula is really great to work with, not too thin and not thick at all. Dry time is not terrible. I think I'll be keeping this on for quite a while if I can. It's not boring me at all though I might add something to it.
Sorry for the super long post! I really tried to get great pics :( I think I'll do my toes again this week though.
As always, thanks for stopping by :)