This is Halloween: Oct. 5 - Water Marble

Hi girls! :)
I'm so excited for today's post. And you may be thinking how can she be excited about water marble after her last attempt!? Well, I'm excited because...

IT WORKED THIS TIME.

Yep, that's right! ;) It worked for me! I had NO problems whatsoever this time! How very exciting. :)
I have a few suspicions as to why it worked well this time.
1. I used a bottle of (filtered) water that I'd had sitting in my room for about a day so it was definitely room temperature this time.
2. I used a larger cup than last time, where I used a disposable shot glass.


I think those things helped me to get a better water marble. Last time I tried this (you can see that HERE - but believe me, it's not pretty :P) the polish wouldn't spread and I think this was because I used non-room-temperature water. :P
A larger cup than I used last time definitely helped too. I'd say to use just a regular cup size. I thought a shot glass would be good because it was small, and since it was disposable I could just chuck it out instead of ruining a cup. But that didn't work because it made it extremely hard to clean up the extra polish in the water before bringing my finger out.

I would definitely recommend watching SimpleLittlePleasures on YouTube because she has AMAZING tutorials. Also, my friend Aubrey from Instagram has an awesome tutorial on her blog here which is also super helpful! Her water marbles are gorgeous! :D

So anyway, onto my water marble. :)

I used Essie - Fear or Desire, which you'll be seeing this a LOT during this month, it's my only true orange in my collection! I really should pick up some more... Let me know if you have any affordable recommendations! I'd like to buy some more oranges but since I will only probably wear them in October around Halloween, I don't want to spend a lot on them. :P and I also used NYC - Night which is my go-to black (other than Ulta3 - Black Satin, which is a bit too fast drying for a water marble!).

I'm so proud of the way this turned out! :) Even though the black didn't turn out very dark on my ring and pinkie, and my middle finger turned out a little funny, that doesn't bother me because it worked much better than my last attempt. :D

The This is Halloween Challenge is super fun so far! :)

Elissa

31DC2012: Day 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural

Hello girlies. My sickness just keeps getting worse. :( But I don't want to fall behind too much in the challenge! Plus I'm so bored and I have to do SOMETHING. The last couple days for the 31 Day Challenge will be very simple manis unfortunately. :( It really sucks.

So today's theme is "Inspired by the Supernatural". What I chose isn't exactly supernatural... I think it fits more into "fantasy", but oh well. ;)
I chose a really simple Harry Potter inspired mani! And yes, yet again I used a tutorial. But I really did not have enough energy to come up with something of my own lol.

Here is the video tutorial I used, by missglamorazzi on YouTube:

For my base on my index and ring fingers, I used NYC - Lemon. For the base on my middle finger I used OPI - Swimsuit Nailed It and on my pinky I used OPI - Cuckoo For This Colour! For the base on my thumb I used Ulta3 - Black Satin. (I chose not to show my thumb, as I had to patch it today and I haven't buffed it out enough, and it looked horrible and bumpy in photos. On my thumb I had a gold sparkly lightning bolt.)
I also used Ulta3 - English Rose, Ulta3 - Antique Copper, Sally Hansen - Celeb City and BYS stripers in Black, Gold glitter and Silver glitter.

This was SO simple to do and only took 20 minutes max, which is pretty perfect for me right now because I can't concentrate for too long and I keep having coughing fits! :(

I'm hoping I'll be feeling a bit better tomorrow! The 31 Day Challenge is almost over! I'm sorry this post was probably all over the place. :(

Elissa

31DC2012: Day 23 - Inspired by a Movie

I could think of a bunch of ideas for "Inspired by a Movie"! I will probably make a list of them and maybe do a series or something! :) Let me know if you'd like to see something like that!

I decided to do a mani I've wanted to try for a while now! Actually maybe 5 months! Wow haha. Its not exactly inspired by a movie, but inspired by someone's nails in a movie! Have you guessed yet? :)

Effie Trinket inspired nails from The Hunger Games! Super easy to do and really pretty! I'm loving gradients right now!

I'm gonna be honest. I'm not like 99% of the population; I haven't read any of The Hunger Games books. Even my boyfriend started it (and never finished it)! Haha! But I have seen the movie. And I have to be honest again, and say that it wasn't as good as I expected it would be. Everyone hyped it up so much and it just didn't live up to it! Maybe because I didn't read the book but I don't know...

Anyway Effie Trinket in the movie had some crazy awesome nails and I wanted to try this design for myself!

I used Revlon ColorStay - Rich Raspberry, a gorgeous berry colour, as the name would suggest, for the base. I think in The Hunger Games the base is a darker berry colour but this was the closest colour I had!
I then sponged on MaxFactor - Ivory. I got this polish for only $0.50 when MF was on sale at Big W a few months ago! :D I wouldn't wear a colour like this as a full mani because I'm not into metallics or anything but it looks good for this look! :)
I then used a thin coat of a sparse small gold glitter polish called Disco Diva by NYC, over the whole nail. I think you can also find NYC at Big W and some supermarkets. I'm pretty sure NYC is made by the same people who make Ulta3 because the bottles are the same.

I really like this look a lot! It's gorgeous!
Let me know if you'd be interested in me doing a movie inspired series on my blog in the near future! :)

Elissa

31DC2012: Day 9 - Rainbow

I am super excited for the nails I have to show you today! Though I have a feeling that many other bloggers may have done a similar manicure to me for the challenge today. x)

By the way, I'm not sure if it's noticeable but I did file my nails down a bit. They were looking a little weird in photos and since I have a blog and like to take photos of my nails, I obviously want them to look nice in the photos. :P I do like my nails long though, and I probably wouldn't go any shorter than they are now (by choice anyway).

I saw a tutorial by a girl on Instagram called ohtammm for a rainbow gradient! It looked really gorgeous so I thought I'd try it for today. :) \
I wasn't super happy with it when I tried it, because I accidentally mixed up where I put two of the colours and when they blended together, they didn't look pretty. :( So it didn't turn out looking really rainbow-ish but it wasn't so bad.

I then decided to do a more traditional rainbow gradient on my other hand. x) I like it a lot better than the other one, but I'm going to show you both. :)

Sam @ The Nailasaurus has a good tutorial for a gradient if you're looking for one (you should be able to find it on her sidebar, it's one of her most popular posts).

The polishes used for both of these looks were:

• China Glaze - Dance Baby
• Essie - Fear or Desire
• China Glaze - Kinetic Candy
• NYC - Lemon
• OPI - Do You Lilac It

A tip I'd have to give is definitely to wet your sponge beforehand and ring it out, it helps for the polish not to sink into the sponge so much.

Elissa

31DC2012: Day 7 - Black & White (Chevron Print Nail Art)

As promised, today I have some nail art to show you for Day 7 of the 31 Day Challenge! :) I am really excited to show you this, it has to be one of my favourite manis I've ever done! And it was SUPER easy to do!

I saw a tutorial by Cutepolish on Youtube (I'm sure 99% of you know of her or have watched at least ONE of her nail tutorials), which you can see HERE to create chevron print nails! I was skeptical at first because all the tutorials I've seen for this print either involve buying decals or something really complicated. But this tutorial really IS easy, if you have the materials.

For these nails you need craft/sewing scissors in a zig zag shape (often called 'pinking shears', if you want a correct term) and regular sticky tape on a dispenser. I had a really hard time finding these scissors! In the scissors section of the craft store I go to, the only pattern they had were wavy and all these other strange patterns, but not zig zag. Which I found very weird because you'd think a zig zag pattern would be really popular but whatever. I also looked in the sewing scissors section and couldn't find any. My grandma ended up giving me an old pair of her pinking shears.
Watch Cutepolish's tutorial that I linked above to see exactly how to do this. :) Trust me, it's very easy! Just make sure your polish underneath is totally dry before you do anything else.

For this mani I used Rimmel - Hot Shot, a great hot pink! On my accent nails I used NYC - Night, my favourite black polish as the baseand Sally Hansen - Whirlwind White for the chevron print! :) (This is where the black and white fits in for today's theme!)

I then did the mani on my other hand but swapped the hot pink for China Glaze - For Audrey!

I absolutely love how this mani turned out and I will definitely be trying it again!

Elissa