Water Marble Nails!

Water Marble!

 

Good evening everybody! Tonight's post is going to be on (shock), water marble nails - as the title explains! ;-)  I have been wanting to write this post for a couple of weeks now, since I've been able to actually do a half decent water marble manicure on myself! It was years since I first tried to do this, and I gave up within an instant. First times (and a little after) of trying

this manicure is SO so frustrating, but please persevere.

I am in no way claiming that I have invented or created this trend, all I'm trying to do is put my way (and possibly others) ways of doing this across. I have had a lot of help from other people, other pictures and YouTube videos. All that I am trying to do by writing a blog post about it, is put things down in writing so you can refer back to here when you need help!

Things that you're going to need:-
• Bottled water (to be used at room temperature)
• A mug (one that you drink tea from is fine) or cup!
• 3 nail polish's + 1 white polish for a base (I use three colours personally)
• Sellotape (or anything similar)
• A wooden stick (or cocktail stick type appliance)

 

So for the sake of being able to write this post, I asked if I could try it out on my mum. It was difficult but I got there in the end lol!

So what I will do first is either wrap my nails with sellotale, I usually only do one or two nails as an accent, as I'm yet to try a full marble mani, and then I will apply a basecoat. You can do either two of these steps in what ever order you desire.
I then will do one coat of what ever white polish or just a nude/light as possible polish. I tend to do a thin layer for the sake of drying time and saving time. I use OPI Alpine Snow. By doing white first, it will help the other colours pop when the design is transferred from the water to the nail.

When these parts are complete I will pour the water into my cup. I use a Justin Bieber one from years ago but you can use which ever one you desire! ;-P
I will then proceed with dropping 'blobs' on polish on to the water. You don't need to wipe the side of the brush on the bottle like you would when painting your nails. You need to keep the 'blobs' as close to the water as you can when dropping them in, simply because for me personally, when I have dropped it from a height it has gone into a ball and not separated enough.
I use 3 polish's when marbling, just because at the moment, it is what I find easiest and most effective. For this mani I chose three colours that were quite different just so you can see the effect a lot clearer than if I was to use for example, three pink shades.



So on the left side of the picture above, you can see I have dropped polish in to the cup and it has gone into circular shapes. You can do this as many times as you like really as long as the polish will keep spreading outwards. Then you will get your orange stick or cocktail stick and start to do what I have done on the right hand picture - pulling the polish around to make patterns. This is the part that you really get to play around with. I would start a couple of colours in from the edge when pulling them, simply because the outer edge will have dried a bit more when you've completed the 'blobbing' part.

You will then submerge your finger on to your favourite part of the design you have made. Keeping your finger flat to the water when you first submerge.
Keep your finger in the water and gently blow on the surface of the design. Then you get your orange stick or cocktail stick and collect the dried polish on the surface of the water that you haven't used for your design. This layer should always be removed before removing your finger from the water.


It is at this point where you realise the importance of the tape from the beginning, because to be honest, without it, the clean up job at the end would be so boring and timely!
To remove the tape, just cut on the part where your finger print is, and remove from around your nail.


Now I have removed the tape, all I need to clean up is the cuticle area. I will use just cotton buds and a little paint brush. (All thanks to the tape).


And here is the finished look! I added a little Leighton Denny Angel Dust as well as a top coat.
I really hope that this post helps any of you that are wanting to try this nail art. If I can do it, so can you! :-) Refer back to here to help you along the way, or ask me, I don't mind! :-)

So as always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me on this link here. I'm also on Instagram with the same name (RiaHughesThen)

Stickers!

Howdy!

Well hello everybody, hope all is well. I thought that tonight I would do a short post on my current nails. I was inspired by the wonderful Jessie J's nails! Jessie has her nails done by a talented lady named Jenny, and Jessie's nails were just clear, with pastel spring coloured tips! So I took that kind of idea and put my own twist on it using some new manicure stencil stickers that I purchased at the weekend!

I have seen many people on Instagram, other social sites and in magazines with the half moon effect manicure and what I have done is tried to recreate it myself. I found it a bit fiddly because I'm not the steady steady nail art kind of gal!



So as you can probably tell, my nails are the top and left picture and Jessie's are the bottom right! I tried to use similar colours as Jessie's, even though when I finished doing these I realised that my thumb and pinky nails look practically identical in colour lol!

To do the glitter I used the manicure stickers to create a half moon-ish shape around my cuticle. I waited for it to dry a little and then painted the rest of my nail as normal with two coats of polish, followed by a fine glitter over everything to combine. It's not my favourite manicure I've ever done but it is just the first try so I'm curious as to what else I'm able to do with them on my nails! :-)

The nail polish brands I used to create this were Nails Inc, China Glaze, Opi and Ted Baker.

Also, I have created a new blog! It's for all things beauty related. Please have a look, you can click here to go there in another web window! :-)

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me on the link! (@RiaHughesThen) - same name on Instagram!

Updated ombré nails.

Recent gradient.

Howdy ya'll! Today my post is going to be on another gradient nail look! I think since posting my first ombré post back in September, I have definitely enjoyed doing them more! I'm more of a glitter girl than a nail art one, but if it's as easy and simple like gradient nails then I'm definitely going to do them! (You can click here to view my previous ombre post.)

To create this look I used 4 different polishes. Nails Inc Wellington Square & Royal Botanical Gardens, BarryM Berry Ice Cream and Leighton Denny Angel Dust. I think I chose to use these kind of colours because I've been seeing a lot of pastel trends at the moment, as it's now spring time! I used the same kind of sponge as I did in the previous (A standard wedge, I'm unsure of another way of ombre-ing?),

 

The picture above is of the simple sponges I use when doing gradient nails, I just cut them in just about half, so the length and width is about the same as your nails. Also by cutting them in half you have two applications from one sponge. Even better, once you have finished your nails, you can let the polish on the sponge dry and cut that piece off and also re use that part. (I'm a secret scrimper, can ya tell?) You can get these kind of make up wedges in most super markets, Boots etc but I actually got mine in Primark. They were around £1/£2 for a bag of 25ish so if you're cutting them in half like I do, then you're getting 50 gradient manicures from one bag!

 

As I did in my previous gradient post, I used the three shades on the 'plain' nails. I added a fine glitter over the top too just because I think it evens out the polish and makes it shiny! Any excuse for glitter right? Of course a clear fast drying top coat was also used over the top of all of the nails after.

If you have any other ways of doing a gradient kind of effect on the nails then please let me know, especially if it's easy. ;-)

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me on the link! (@RiaHughesThen) - same name on Instagram!

First time dotting!

Dotting tools!

Well hello there strangers! I haven't done a post in such a long time (6 months in fact!) but I really want to get back in to doing blog posts more often. I just hope that you guys want to still read things like this. I think that is one of the reasons I haven't been posting, is because I'm able to post and interact instantly on Instagram (@RiaHughesThen), but either way I'm going to try! :-)

So recently I purchased some dotting tools on Amazon. They're the ones that most people use I guess because I've seen them on a lot of pictures. They were only £1 with free P&P, so I bought them as they were so cheap really, and because I don't do much nail art, it seemed like a good place to try out something different than glitter polish. It came with 5 tools and both ends have 'dots' on, and there are 5 different sizes.

So the picture above is one of the tools I purchase. (picture from Amazon.co.uk)
I think I most definitely underestimated how hard it is to do tidy dot designs on nails, especially on my right hand because I'm right handed!

This is what I came up with, really simple but quite pretty. I used Nails Inc Sheraton Street and OPI Alpine Snow. I wanted the dots to be relatively even and well separated which was a little bit tricky! It was quite hard keeping the same amount of polish on the tool on each application, but I'll get there! ;-)

There are so many other things that can be done with these tools on the nails, which I've seen on Instagram etc, just like flowers and more intricate designs which I'm looking forward to trying out!
If anyone has any advice on how to keep a steady hand whilst doing dots or what other designs can be done, then please let me know! :-)

Since being away from blog posting, my nail passion hasn't faded, if anything it has grown and I'm loving all the nailspiration on Instagram and YouTube for example.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me on the link! (@RiaHughesThen) - same name on Instagram!