Tag: Rayne

Watermarble Tips

Watermarble Tips

I will be the first one to admit that I have a really hard time with different nail art techniques. I really started out as a swatcher, so that is what I am most comfortable with. However, I don’t want my blog and passion for nails to stagnate so I do try to do things that are outside of my comfort zone. Stamping was one of the first things that I tried so it became something that I have continued to enjoy because I find it easy and fun. Enter watermarble. I have been dealing with trying to watermarble for probably a year if not longer. I went through phases where I tried, gave up for a while, tried again and gave up again. It was just so frustrating because it seemed that no matter what I did, nothing worked. Finally, I am here to tell you that you can master this technique because if I can, anyone can! While there is no one technique that will guarantee success, I will be sharing with you what worked for me.

Water

You would never think that choosing the right water would make such a huge difference. There are people who will say that tap water works just fine or that you have to use distilled water. I’ve tried both and tap water never worked for me. I guess it could be that tap water differs from region to region, but distilled water is the only thing that has worked for me. The temperature of the water was also important because only room temperature water seemed to work well.

Polishes

Once you have the water issue figured out, you have to figure out what polishes work well for marbling. This is all about trial and error because not all polishes work well and some don’t work well together. Personally, the best polishes for marbling that I have used are OPI cremes. They spread well, are very pigmented and don’t dry too quickly. I’ve tried some cheaper polishes and they seem to dry out quickly. Certain holos and shimmers work very nicely as well, but to be honest, you just have to play around with polishes to see which ones will work best.

Creating your design

So you got the water right and your polishes spread nicely into rings. YAY! This is where my next womp womp moment occurred. I could not, for the life of me, get a nice even design. The easiest and most common design is the flower design where you drag your needle from the outside in and join the petals at the center. Well, I could not get this right. I figured out that my issue was that I was trying to drag from the outermost ring which was already beginning to set so I was breaking up the rings and just ruining everything. This might seem like common sense, but I was constantly messing up on this. I also wasn’t cleaning my needle/toothpick in between each drag so the excess polish on the tool wasn’t letting me create clean lines. Why must this be so hard???

The Big Dipper

You’re almost there, right? WRONG. Now you have to figure out how to dip your fingers into the design and not mess it up. I also managed to mess this up time and again. It’s easy enough to line up the design, but if you dip your fingers like a dumbass, you can get a big old mess. I also always got a billion air bubbles on my design which would then pop and ruin the design. The only solution for this, in my experience, is to dip your fingers at an angle and pull out your fingers very slowly.

After all this, why would anyone want to even bother with watermarbling? Well because when you get it right, it looks awesome. Let me show you what I did for my last watermarble.

1First you will want to paint your nails a solid color. White works well most of the time so I’ve used one of my favorite whites: Sation Strumming My Nails (press sample) which is a dupe for OPI MBSW. I think the formula on this one is slightly better than the OPI.

2Then you are going to want to tape up your finger to protect your skin from all the mess. I also applied a little glue around my cuticle area that would still be exposed to make clean up easier–especially because the polishes I chose have a lot of shimmery particles.

4For this watermarble I used the three shimmers from the Zoya Delight Collection (press sample): Daisy, Leslie and Rayne which work beautifully. In fact, the cremes from this collection also work perfectly.

5Imagine if you didn’t tape up your finger…you would have all this polish on your skin.

6With the glue and tape, this is what my clean up job ended up being. Not bad, right?

78And this is the finished mani after all the clean up was done. This looks like Easter exploded on my nails, but I think it looks pretty.

So do you think this technique is worth all the fuss? Do you have any other tips that might help others who are watermarble challenged? Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

 

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Zoya Delight Collection Spring 2015

Zoya Delight Collection Spring 2015

PressSample

 

 

I meant to have this post up on Monday, but it just didn’t happen. My parents are visiting so everything went to hell. On Friday I had the worst stomach bug ever, and I’m still wondering if it was stress or something else. Fortunately it was gone by Sunday because I would have missed out on my mom’s cooking the first day–oh man my mom is the best cook in the world. So besides my parents being in town and my getting some extra time with the Peanut Brat, everything has been going ok. My nails are still in recovery mode. The damage is growing out rather quickly, but I’m nearing the point where the most severe damage is near the tips of my nails now so I’m expecting a lot of breaks and issues in the next couple of weeks. My nail bed is horribly uneven still so I’m experiencing issues with applying polish evenly since it always looks off because my nails are jacked up. Oh well…I’ll just have to deal with it and take my punishment for being dumbass. This weekend I managed to squeeze in some time to swatch the Zoya Delight Collection and boy was it a…delight? Read on to find out what I thought!

12Zoya Eden

34Zoya Lillian

56Zoya Tiana

78Zoya Leslie

910Zoya Rayne

1112Zoya Daisy

Saying that I really enjoyed the Zoya Delight Collection isn’t enough–I really loved it. The combination of 3 creamy and delicious cremes with 3 metallic shimmers is genius because it gives us almost two collections without being overwhelming. I loved the delicate colors and really enjoyed the welcome pop of shimmer in one half of the collection. I didn’t have problems with the formula despite the light color which is really exciting to me. I’ve also been caught up in my own watermarble world that I used the three cremes for an accent watermarble nail:

I think that it turned out really nice. What do you think?

1314Overall, this collection gets a big thumps up from me. What do you think if these polishes? Will you be picking up any of these colors? If I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be Leslie for sure! The Zoya Delight Collection can be purchased on zoya.com where they retail for $9 a bottle. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!