Caramel Toffee Swirls

I love caramel and toffee.  Such delicious combinations of melted sugar, butter, and vanilla.  They melt in your mouth, are smooth, and amazingly creamy.  Mmmm....

That's the idea I had in mind with a water marble I created.  My base color was two coats of China Glaze Kalahari Kiss.  I alternated drops of China Glaze Call of the Wild, China Glaze Desert Sun, and China Glaze Kalahari Kiss into a cup filled with deionized water and then drew some shapes using a cooking skewer.  The final result?  The appearance of caramel swirled together with toffee on my nails.  Yum!

I don't usually show my left hand on here.  The nails are short and damaged, still, from the excessive nail biting that haunted my younger years but I really like how the water marble turned out on this hand.

I think from now on I'm only going to do water marbles based on food.

Guest Post: Strawberry Lemonade

Good morning!  I almost forgot to mention that yesterday I was guest posting over at Painting Rainbows about the water marble manicure I created using colors from the China Glaze Summer Neon collection.

[Click Here!]

Stop on over and check it out!

Drink Up!

This was the water the girls had to filter.  

A few weeks back I was an instructor for a program called G.E.M.S.: Girls in Engineering Math and Science.  It's a program aimed at middle school girls to support math and science exploration.  I led a session on what it's like to be a water treatment engineer and had the girls build their own filter and turn murky water to clear water.    It was a lot of fun...I may have had as much (or more) fun than the girls preparing everything and getting the experiments set up!

In honor of the event, I did my nails with a water marble.  I was a bit pressed for time and only marbled my middle and ring fingers.  Doing just those two nails worked out really well and I like how it turned out.  I usually put of marbling because of how long it takes, but with just doing two nails on each hand the time commitment is significantly cut down.

I used a one-coat base of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On to prepare my nails for the marbling procedure.  For the surrounding nails I used China Glaze Electric Beat.  For the water marble I alternated drops of White On, Electric Beat, and China Glaze Blue Year's Eve.  I was a bit disappointed that the sparkle in Blue Year's Eve didn't show up as much as I would have liked.  Live and learn.

Pastel Water Marble

Going hand in hand with adorable baby animals for spring is an excessive use of pastel colors!  I love water marbling and wish I was better at it, so this was the perfect opportunity to try out some new polishes I acquired and get more practice.  I think it turned out really awesome.

The colors I used were OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?, Essie Turquoise & Caicos, and Essie Bangle Jangle.  I never want to take the chance that a polish I'm using will be so thin on my nail that the color won't be opaque so I always paint my nail with a base of white polish.  For this water marble I painted my nails with a single, super thin and streaky coat of Zoya Snow White.  I also love a little glitter, so I topped everything with a thin coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.

Week 11: St. Patrick's Day Manicure

The challenge for week eleven was St. Patrick's Day.  Wow, I can't believe it's already March and St. Patrick's Day is nearly upon us.  I feel like time is just rushing by too quickly.  I haven't been feeling much like clovers, Langerhans, or pots of gold so I was a bit unsure of what to paint my nails.  I ended up going up with a basic green water marble.  I really like water marbling and should do it more often.

I suffered a break on my ring finger and it looks very sad in these photos.  Looks like my left hand will be making appearances for a while until my fingernail grows out.

For this I painted my nails a base color of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White.  I alternated drops of Zoya Shawn, China Glaze Cha Cha Cha, and Whirlwind White.  I love how my pinky and middle finger turned out!

Be sure to check out what others have done for this challenge by visiting their blogs:

LizMarie at I'm Simply Complex • Jenna at I'm Still Thinking... • Caitlin at Addicted 2 Nails • Sarah at PrncessSarah02 • Charlotte at Charlotte's Nails :) • Shally at Polished & Not Quite Put Together • Rachel-Karina at Polished Criminails • Liz at Nothing But Nail Polish • Fun With My Nail Polish • Operation: Nail It! • Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails • Square Polish • Only Always Soccermom  • Hurr Did, Nails Did • Olivia Writes • The Dragon Lady • Kaki at Glitter Obsession • Isa at IsaBella's World • Gypsy at Gypsy's Glitter • Jackie at MeMa's Mani's  • Lissa at Lissa's Nail Blog

Day 20: WATER MARBLED

I scheduled this post because I'm off in Minnesota visiting my family for Christmas.  I didn't do much in the way of Christmas, or any other holiday, manicures this year but I thought it would be cute to do a red white a green water marble combination for Day 20 of the 31 Day Challenge.

I used two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Whirlwind White as a base for the marbling, then alternating drops of Zoya Sooki, Zoya Snow White, and Orly Lucky Duck for the swirls.  I used a white base because when I tried dipping naked nails Lucky Duck was very sheer and I had major VNL.  I topped everything with two coats of Wet'n'Wild Wild Shine Kaleidoscope, a color I received earlier this year as part of my Polish-aholics Anonymous Secret Santa (thank you Amanda!).  A final coat of Seche Vite holds everything in place and gives a nice shiny finish.

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