The Show Must Go On!

Hi all! Today I have a very quickly done mani for you - I had to paint my nails before I played with hair dye, and you know me - I can't just leave it at clear coat. I went with OPI The Show Must Go On, from the Burlesque collection - one of my favorites that was, unfortunately, before my love affair with nail polish, so they've been tough to track down. I received this lovely in a swap! Shown is two coats - the first coat went on VERY streaky and patchy, but luckily, the second evened things out. TSMGO is a lovely duochrome glitter that's almost metallic - I get flashes of red and gold, depending on the light. I topped it off with a coat of Poshe.

On my middle fingers and thumb, I added a thin coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. The purple made those nails look slightly darker, but the multichrome goodness of FF was mostly lost in the flashiness of TSMGO. In super low lights, though, I could see the green shimmer - I just couldn't catch it on camera.

No cleanup here - I didn't expect the mani to last through my hair dye ordeal, but it did (and so did some of the unwanted hair color). Off I go to fix it - Thanks for reading!

China Glaze Kinetic Candy, and a water marble

Hi all! Today was a lazy day, and my last day off for the foreseeable future, so I figured I'd take the time to do my nails. Per request, I chose a light blue - China Glaze Kinetic Candy, from the Electropop collection (pretty widely available via etailers still, doubt you'll see it in stores anymore). It's pretty bright for a pastel, but soft, and it covered fairly well in two coats (it was a little streaky, but topcoat pretty much evened it out). A bubble here and there, but I am going to blame the air in here. Here it is with a coat of Out the Door, indoor light:

I decided that I'd give a water marble accent nail a shot tonight - it's only my third time doing it, and I'm not quite comfortable with a whole marble mani yet. I did that the first time I tried it, and not only did it take almost two hours - I drove my fiance nuts - but it didn't turn out all that great.

For this one, I decided to go with greens, blues, and purple. Left to right: China Glaze Kinetic Candy, OPI Mermaid's Tears, CG Aquadelic, Zoya Robyn, CG First Mate, and CG Tempest. Not exactly color-true - thanks, phone camera! I need to get a new camera, mine's been abused to death.

Also visible: hammer. Not involved in today's mani :)

When I marble, I coat the finger in petroleum jelly or lip balm to make cleanup slightly easier, though I've heard it will just peel off your finger anyway - I'd rather avoid having crazy polish stains on my fingers! Here's my left and right middle fingers, pre-cleanup - I'm not ready for topcoat quite yet, so I'm chilling here at the comp with crazy blue swirls on my fingers...

I'm ok with them - marbling always looks better with more nail to work with, I think, and Tempest and Mermaid's Tears aren't as vibrant as I'd like...oh, and the designs aren't as good as they could've been. But it could've been worse! Maybe I'll add some holo topcoat tomorrow...

Have you ever done a water marble? Got any ideas or tips? I'd love to hear them!