My 2nd attempt at water marbling

Ok I attempted a water marble manicure again today, after my semi-disastrous first try. Before trying it directly on my nails I figured I should practise it on a couple of fake nails, the result of which I will also be showing and which gave me hope. This time the designs transferred much better on my nails, no clumping of nail polish whatsoever. The problem was the bubbling, oh my I got so many bubbles it's not even funny. I had read up on the issue beforehand but turns out I need to do some more reading, not to mention practise different techniques to see if I can avoid that somehow. Anyway, despite the bubbling, I love the end result as I didn't think I would get the designs to transfer as well as they did.

And now for fake nails:

Love this one, I don't think I'll ever be able to top this or do another one just as good

Damn that bubble! Duh! Otherwise I love this one to bits!

Color Club "Beyond"

Here are my swatches of one of the new Halo Hues, Beyond, which is a black holo. As soon as I saw swatches of it in other blogs I knew I had to get it. I love love love it, it's insanely holographic and a one-coater at that, yay! Smooth application. Worth every penny.

 

Picture Polish "Focus"

Picture Polish Focus is a collaboration shade by PP with Sheila from Pointless Cafe. Oh I love this one so much! It's a gorgeous fuchsia (my pictures make the base colour look red, in real life it's fuchsia) packed with flakies that look silver in the bottle but turn pink on the nail. It's insanely sparkly in the sun, my photos don't do it justice! 2 coats, easy application.

 

I did some stamping on it using MoYou white polish. I was inspired by this beautiful manicure by Spellbinding Nails. 

Thumb: Konad Q1 plate;

Index: Konad M12 for the Christmassy candycane and an Essence plate for the cone;

Medium: Betina B-01;

Ring: BM308; 

Pink: BM322 for the big candy (I messed it up a bit, but that is no flaw of the plate or the polish! I had already done that nail and then I had the dumb idea of filling in the candy with colours, but unfortunately that didn't come out all right so I had to stamp it again, this time being careful of not stamping it over the smaller candy, so the end result wasn't too good) and Konad Q1 for the smaller candy. 

A England "Ascalon"

A England Ascalon is a dark grey polish with a subtle purple duochrome and a scattered holographic effect. I'm not normally into grey polish but I love this one quite a lot! The purple duochrome, although rather subtle and not "in your face", is definitely there but my camera had a hard time picking that up (just like it did with the green flash that shows up on the sides at an angle. The 5th picture kind of shows that a bit). 2 coats, easy application. I have other polishes by A England that I love, it's a fantastic brand.


Shade

Artificial light

Sun

I did some stamping using Konad Special Polish in black and the following image plates:

Thumb: Apipila P.7
Index: Apipila P.1
Medium: OB16
Ring: BM 322
Pinky: Apipila P.7

Essence 151 "We rock the green"

Here are my swatches of the new Essence shade We rock the green. Yeah we rock the green and this polish rocks my socks! I am a sucker for greens and this one is so pretty! The formula is on the thick side but didn't give me any problems.

I was dying to use my MM04 image plate and do a belated St. Patrick's Day manicure. We don't celebrate it in Italy but it's such a cool theme, I certainly wouldn't mind if we did! This plate is fantabulous, it stamps amazing and the designs are spot-on for St. Patrick's, perfection! I got it from Messy Mansion. Julia, the owner, is exquisite and her service is flawless!