Most of you probably know that I picked up some sheer shades recently and I.LOVE.THEM.  I've had so much fun playing with them.  They blend, they can be layered, you can color with them... the possibilities are just endless.  One of the ways I played with them was in doing something I'm calling a splash marble.  This may well have been done previously, it's difficult to create a new nail technique these days, but if it has I haven't seen it anywhere. You can use it to make multiple effects and I've sort of fine tuned it for a future mani.  Basically what you want to do is to do a standard water marble and then use alcohol to spray the surface so that the marble separates.  My index nail was a bit of a fail but you can use it to do a random sort of marble like on my pinky OR to make sort of a blended leopard type effect like my middle two fingers.  The sheers make it extra interesting because if you don't make a full bulls-eye in your cup but rather, just do a few sheer drops, you can then dip your nail repeatedly to make a layered effect.  I think it might be fun to use this in conjunction with stamping like a pond mani but I haven't gone that far with it yet.  At any rate I hope you like the art!! :)

All colors by Color Club: Warhol, Pucci-licious, and Twiggie.

These nails are actually kind of old! I'm trying to work through a backlog of un-posted nails. That might not be such a bad thing since, after a month of changing polish nearly daily and not much time to moisturize, my nails were looking kind of awful and I ended up cutting them all down. New year, new nails, right?  I'm using Orly Nail-trician to try to get them back into shape.  I've never had brittle, weak, or slow growing nails and I still don't but they could use a boost at any rate.  I also switched to Orly Nail Armor base coat from the Seche Clear I was using before. We'll see if any of it makes a difference!  Anyway I did these nails to practice my water marbling skills.  I know the trick to getting them pretty I just don't' always have the patience to do them.  I thought these turned out rather nice and since I didn't have the pressure of doing my whole hand I went more slowly with the marbling.  I'm also trying to incorporate more art 'supplies' into my nail art.  I have SO many beads, stones, stickers, tapes, etc. to use and yet I never do.  So these used some nail studs I got from Dollar Nail Art. :)  Hope you all enjoy! Thanks for following along!

Base is Ulta Snow White

Green: Models Own Jade Stone

Blue: Models Own Feelin' Blue

Silver Studs from Dollar Nail Art

I can't believe it's already Day 4 of the 31 Days of Christmas Challenge and so far, I've only missed one day!  Given that I've been wicked busy this past week, I feel pretty good about that.  Today was the water marble challenge and I'll admit, I was feeling worried.  I don't have much gold and silver polish which isn't metallic and metallics are notoriously difficult to marble. I thought about just a simple red and green but the challenge says gold and red and I didn't want to do it halfway.  So then I decided to use my China Glaze glitter to do the marble.  I know what you're thinking, you can't water marble with glitter!! But I assure you, you can!  This was done WITH water too, not a dry marble or a needle marble.  (don't worry, I'll share the secret soon enough!) The results came out REALLY nice.  I think this is my best water marble to date!!  I hope you're all enjoying the challenge with me! It's not too late to join along in the fun!

Don't forget to check out what Debbie, Claire, Kerrie, and Emma came up with for their watermarble mani's!

Marble is done with: China Glaze Twinkle Lights and Poinsettia