Go With the Flow

I was recently the lucky recipient of these lovely Zoya polishes – pink Kristie, blue Maren, turquoise Harbor, and purple Jessica – thanks to the kind folks at Nail Polish Canada.  I swatched them all, of course – see my previous post for those details – but I also wanted to do a bit of nail art with my new, candy-coloured polishes.

Problem: I’m SO out of practice these days, both in terms of nail art ability and actual nail care, that a good mani for me is one in which my nails are not encrusted with a solid quarter-inch of gardening grit.  I figured at best I’d come up with something ultra easy, like a simple dotticure.

Instead I decided to shoot for the moon and do a water marble manicure, perhaps THE most difficult nail art technique, one that requires you to float polish on the surface of water.  Because that just sounds SUPER easy (spoiler alert: it’s usually not, and it’s always hella messy!)

Except….this time, with these polishes, it wasn’t.  Even after my extended absence from the nail art realm.  I think it’s because these four lacquers – rich cremes, all – are brand new, and at the peak of their polish power, having not picked up months’ and years’ worth of oil and grime.  All four are of a completely identical consistency as well, making it ultra easy to float the polish on the surface of water AND toothpick-out a swirled design.  TL;DR?  These Zoya polishes make water marbling EASY, even for the woefully out of practice.

Speaking of, I realize that without photos of the water marbling process, this must all sound like utter gibberish.  So might anyone be interested in a little tutorial?  Because I’d like to give this technique another try, see if I could come up with a slightly more consistent design finger-to-finger (much as I like the every-digit-for-itself approach.) 😉  Please do come back soon to see how I work out with that!

Banana Split

Hey look, it’s that banana split water marble I’ve been promising all summer long, extra sprinkles, cherry on top.  And wonder of wonders, it kind of turned out this time – there’s definitely more banana to these sundaes than my last frozen pink lemonade attempt. Anyhow, grab a spoon, dig in and all that other yummy stuff!

Limeade Love

As with all things in life – but especially friggin’ pain-in-my-arse water marble manis – practice makes perfect, so when my blogging friend Five Zero suggested – nay, demanded? – limeade nails to go along with yesterday’s frozen pink lemonade manicure, I happily snapped-to, this time with the addition of a couple of sweet Fimo fruits.  Next do we have any calls for orangeade, maybe a little Orange Julius action?  Or how about a strawberry daiquiri water marble?  I’ll call it the Frozen Drinks of Summer Series (*immediately goes off to begin making a list of every possible type of fruit and/or rum-infused cocktail.  I could be gone a while.*)

Frozen Pink Lemonade

Adventures in water marbling have once again produced a pretty – if ill-defined – animal that started out life as a nod to the mighty banana split and instead wound up as slushy frozen lemonade.  I suppose that’s what happens when you forget the brown “chocolate sauce” polish.  Also when you water marble as terribly as I do; it always seems like every nail is just doing its own thang, heedless to my pleas for nail art consistency. Although I guess screwing up every water marble mani I’ve ever done is its own type of consistency, so at least there’s that!