Lots of new exciting nails...YAY!

It's been a while since I posted here... I've done sooo many nails it's unreal..

I had just recently mastered the technique of water marbling, and it's so addictive and always looks awesome! But I didn't want to just do simple bog-standard water marble videos... I tried to think of something different and possibly original.
This rainbow look was purely from my imagination. It hasn't been tubed by anyone else [I don't think] although a couple of people have said they had similar ideas.

It was so much fun to do and since I posted it a few people have said they tried it out with different colours and with clear polish and it turned out awesome so...YAY!

Here's my other hand...

Crap lighting, but looks pretty cool in the other direction

Some people have said it can't be done on short nails. I respectfully disagree. It does look different, but it's still pretty cool. My cousin Rachel and her lovely younger sister Caitlin wanted in so I did the design on them too....

Rachel's Rainbow

Caitlin's Rainbow

I had never done water marble on anyone except myself before so it was quite weird, and a little bit difficult at first to dip someone else's hands in the water as carefully as I dip my own... and this is what happened to Cookie Monster in the process:

Cookie Monster's Been Chimney Sweeping!

Yup. Only had him on for two days but to be honest he was starting to chip. This was a result of Seche Clear Base Coat. I used it because it's great for preventing yellow staining, but it starts peeling at the edges after about 24 hours. I LOVE Seche Vite Topcoat, but I think Seche base coat is crap!! Anyway here's the Cookie Monster video - a nice clean chimney sweep free design....

Preparing for halloween I thought I'd upload this design as well - Skull Butterflies! YAY!
These were not from my imagination but I did make them my own and put my own twist on them. They were originally created by Robin Moses - I'm addicted to her art and although I have plenty of imagination myself and don't need inspiration from others, I still HAD to paint these!

Here's my skull butterflies:

And here's the original design by Robin:

Skulls with butterflies... the possibilities are endless with far out weird-ass nails!
I never let anyone paint my nails... but if I ever met Robin I TOTALLY would! She's just been so awesome and lovely to me and I'm so glad I met her. One day we'll meet in real life and it'll be absolutely mental. We'll out-weird each other with our wise words and sparkly thoughts....

Ok so I think that's all I have to say today....
Sorry if I don't reply to comments yet, I still haven't fixed it. This technology and html shit is so complicated! And Blogger won't let me comment.
I'm working on it.

LOVE YOU ALL BYYYE!
xxx

My First Ever YouTube Water Marble

I've finally mastered the technique of water marbling. WOOHOO!!
It's not the first time I've ever done it, and no I don't think I'm very good at it, but I've practiced loads and failed so many times.

Here are pictures of my first success. Obviously I didn't match both my hands...

After months of watching these awesome YouTubers make it look so easy I've finally found a way of doing it myself. Here are some things I have learnt...

Water:

The water works best if it is room temperature. You can achieve this by leaving it in the room for a few hours or overnight. Some people can use tap water but where I live is a hard water area and we have lead pipes so our tap water is crap for marbling. I tried it with Evian bottled water and it was better but still came out all lumpy on most of my nails. Finally, I invested in a Brita Water Filter for £17 at The Range [pink one, yay!] and that was perfect! Filtered water works best for me.

Polishes:

I have a zillion different brands and there isn't a specific brand I would say works better than others it was just a case of trial and error. Some polishes spread well, some don't spread at all. I've heard that China Glaze is one of the best for marbling but I only have two CG polishes and I didn't want a pink and orange marble. I found that the thinner, slower drying polishes work best. If you take the brush out of the bottle and the polish almost slides off the brush like water or drips really easily, then it'll probably marble very well. The thick, gloopy polishes that hardly drip probably won't spread at all. Sometimes if you've got one that spreads perfectly and one that's not so good then you can mix them together, because the spreadable one will push the other one out.

Prepping:

I paint all my nails white because the marbled polishes come out quite thin so the white makes it pop. You could paint nails a different colour for a completely different look, but I stuck with white :) I put tape [very messy tape] around my fingers and stuck it as close to the nail as possible to make clean up easier. I used lip balm last time cos you can just wipe it off, but you have to wipe it off straight away or it will go hard all over your fingers - too much mess while doing nails. So I think the tape method is much cleaner.

Tools:

I used a small bowl - the smaller the container, the less polish you use - but the pattern will also be smaller so there's less chance you'd be able to do 3-4 nails at once.

To make the marble pattern I used a toothpick/cocktail stick. Some people use a dotting tool or a pin or needle. I've tried them all and they work the same in my experience as long as you wipe it off between each drag - if you don't then the pattern will have ugly lumps in it.

For cleaning up the polish on the water surface, this makes a huge mess on the stick so I use cotton buds for this cos I can just throw them away straight after rather than having a massive fat orange stick with ten tons of gloopy polish over it!

I used a flat brush [small one] with acetone to clean around the cuticles afterwards. This is easier than using cotton buds cos you can be more precise and there's less chance of touching the nail and ruining the design.

If there are any small bubbles on the nail [this happens a lot] you can pop them gently with a pin. If they look too obvious you can always touch them up with the polish and a toothpick. I make sure to get rid of all bubbles before topcoat because if they're still there then they can drag under the topcoat [even Seche Vite!] and that's a pain in the ass!

**Another tip I may add - a suggestion from ARPIANNINNI :

STYROFOAM CUPS ARE NOT GOOD for water marbling.
Nail polish melts them. So if you have a drop sink down to the bottom, the cup will get a hole and you'll have a big seeping pool of nail polish water all over your desk. Yup.

Use plastic, glass or paper cups. They're safe as houses.

Here's the video - surprisingly easy to film!

I absolutely love the way it looks - not mine specifically, just the effect of water marbling on nails it just looks amazing. I'm so happy with these and hope to improve and make more videos on it. I think they might be more than just marbles though... I get bored easily.

Ever noticed I don't have an intro in my vids?

Yeah. Don't want one. Would change it all the time.

Here's my lazy left handed design...

Anyway that will be all for today

xx Love you guys xx

Halloween, Ears and Mentalness...

Ok so it's been a while since I've done anything on here so this might be a massive huge long story full or randomness and stuff... but there will obviously be some nails. I can't go a whole day without nails, man!

Anyway, the last bank holiday weekend I went with my cousin Rachel to London. Rachel is the shorter nailed model you may have seen on some of my designs on facebook. She took me to London as a thank you for all the nails I've painted on her. We were meant to go to Notting Hill Carnival but because of all the riots and stuff going on in the UK they closed it early so we ended up missing most of it.
Thanks, UK thugs. You're so helpful with your lovely riots.

On a more positive note, while I was there I went to CAMDEN MARKET!! I've always dreamt of going there and I just HAD to buy some weird stuff to wear.

This rainbow thing is SO AMAZING!! It goes with everything in my wardrobe and actually fits my massive manly long arms!! It has a pointy pixie hood and it's totally handmade so each one is different. The man wanted to sell it for £30 but I got it for £24. Meheheh. Very nice, helpful man but seeing as he as good as forced me to buy it I had to flutter my eyelashes to get a discount ;)

EAR HAT WITH ATTACHY-SCARF AND POCKETS!!
I fell in love with it and I know I have ears already but I had to have it <3 I just noticed that one of the pockets is on the wrong side?!! How weird. Oh well, fuck it at least I can say it has "character" haha.
Perfect for the winter months and they totally match my Doc Martens.
Ears are a must-have wardrobe item. Everyone should wear ears.

Yeah so that's what I bought from Camden - check out my sexy posing. I don't try to look nice and photogenic cos I always fail. More fun to just pull faces. BLAAAA!!

We went clubbing in the Electric Ballroom. I ended up dancing to Justin Bieber. That was vodka's fault. Not mine. CAMDEN YOU DISAPPOINTED ME!! No but seriously it was an awesome nite. Not a SINGLE bloke tried to grope me or use a filthy chat up line. It was amazing. Much more classy than the skanks I always meet [and try to escape from] in Weston-shitty-Mare.
Camden is cool. So is the rest of London... but I don't think I could stay there for more than a week. I'm a country girl. I like to be able to drive down the road without stopping every two metres!

NAILS!!

I've recently done a lot of re-uploading on my YouTube videos. Reason is because if I was ever offered revenue sharing, the Audioswap videos can't be used. And my first 40 videos have Audioswap on them. I've only just learned this. I'm hoping my lovely subbies won't get too pissed off with all the re-uploads. I'm uploading at least one new one per week so it's not like I'm recycling old material.

Here's my most recent nails - YouTube and non YouTube ones...

Bad Ass Leopard and Early Halloween Ghosts. I'm excited about halloween nails.

Rainbows - this is on Rachel - she wanted something more simple but I didn't understand her and painted this by accident... she LOVED it so yaaaaay!!

Peacock - this was my first ever peacock design on Tanya - I drove to the middle of nowhere to do a full set of acrylics and some funky peacocks as per her request - and I'd do anything for her cos she's awesome. We had a mental time I think we got high on the fumes cos we were talking about "Acrylates" the whole time...
Sort out your acrylates... ahhh I can't take it there's too many acrylates!!!

Super - fun!!

And these are from my collaboration from superminx66 -  we both had so much fun doing hem and it looks like we've totally set a trend - Robin Moses responded to my video!! She did some funky kick ass graffiti pop-art nails and they're just amazing. I was so excited to see them.

And now another girl has said she wants to paint them and video response too.
LETS ALL PAINT POP ART NAILS ON YOUTUBE!! YAAAY!!

So yeah, productive couple of weeks.
Mental.

Talk soon peeps, keep smiling!!
xxxxxxxx