Neon Watermarble Nails

So I'm venturing into the scary world of water marbling once more, and this time it WORKED! I think the trick here was that I left a bottle of tap water in the house for a good few days so it was well and truly at room temperature.

Inspired by the Water Marble queen Colette at My Simple Little Pleasures and this tutorial!

I've seen quite a few Vloggers now doing watermarbling designs with clear polish as this one does. Some brands now are selling specific clear polish to water marble with but I used Essie's all in one base coat and top coat for my water marble which worked fine and I think Colette used a regular top coat too. Just don't use a quick dry top coat like Seche Vite or HK Girl as it won't work.

I copied Colette's colour scheme gradient to start off with, using the following polishes:

Purple - Orly Be Daring

Blue - Nails Inc Kensington Park Road

Yellow - Orly Glowstick

Then I did my water marble using China Glaze 'Liquid Leather' as Colette does in her manicure and the Essie All in One base and top coat and when I had cleaned up I topped with China Glaze 'Fairy Dust'. 

Some nails came out better than others, but overall I'm really happy with my attempt, especially the thumb nail in the picture above. I'm also less scared of having a go at water marbling again, although it is still a bit messy!

Neon, Neon, Neons Part II

My Neon order has arrived and I've been trying out some bright nails. I ordered these little bottles of happiness from The Nail and Beauty Link who have the best prices I've seen for Orly polishes. All prices as shown on the website are without VAT, so these came to £6 each. From left to right these are:

Glow Stick

Risky Behaviour

Be Daring

Fireball

Strictly again you could say some of these aren't true neons, GlowStick definitely is and is described as a true highlighter yellow. I've not gotten round to wearing all of these lovely polishes yet, however as purple is my favourite colour, I chose 'Be Daring' to wear first!

Gorgeous, gorgeous bright purple, and considering that I have many, many purple polishes and is probably the colour I have most of, I don't already have this shade. As will most Orly polishes the formula and brush were up to the job and this was opaque in two coats.

I think I'll try a gradient with the other colours and maybe a go at water marbling like this amazing manicure from My Simple Little Pleasures.

Wish me luck, not had much luck with water marbling, but hopefully using just two polishes I may get away with! 

Here's my other polish purchases I made last week in Manchester from Urban Outfitters, I love their W.I.P polishes and the neon yellow was only £3 in their sale, the shade is very similar to Orly's Glow Stick but this one has a shimmer running through it too.

The other two I picked up where Glitter polishes and these are 'Bits N Bobs' which is a lovely mix of all types of glitter in neon yellow, white and green. The polish at the front on the right is called 'Mardis Gras' and you can see that it's an explosion of all different colours and sizes of Hex glitter. Can't wait to try these, not sure what I'm going to do with them yet!

Neon, Neon, Neons

Last week some of my favourite nail Vloggers did a collab video on their favourite neon polishes. This is a colour and style I've never sported myself as I often opt for dark vampy shades but for some reason these videos rekindled my nail polish addiction and I hunted down some the top polishes they picked and raided my collection to see if I had anything I could sport until my new bottles arrived.

Seemed I had a few polishes that claimed to be 'Neon' but the jury seems to be out on what each person considered a neon polish to be and don't even start on Neon Pastels.

This is Nails Inc 'Kensington Park Road', it's probably not a true neon as it's a blue, but it sure is BRIGHT. I layered this over a white base too in order to make it pop. (Again the jury is out on whether you need to layer a true neon over a white base or not).

I also found a Nails Inc polish in a bright Orange Neon called 'Optic Flame' but my mani chipped quickly and my pointer finger on my left hand that I'd been patching for a week broke off very low so lovely swatching pictures weren't to be...

However some of my Neon polishes have NOW arrived, so I need to create some eye smarting manicures with them and share them with you all!

In the meantime, I took a trip to Primark and purchased some of their £1 stick on nails to cover the ruination that is my nails at, they seem to be breaking quite easily at the moment. These have lasted a day so far although my thumb nail did ping off, but was quickly stuck back on with no bother.

Love these little bright triangles, have a thing about triangles at the mo, not sure why! Let's see how long these last! Next stop NeonVille!

Do you love or loathe Neons? Let me know in the comments below and also what you think about Primark Nail products as whole? I have quite a few polishes too, and for a £1 I think their formula's and colours are really good, undecided on the stick on nails though...

I got the blues

So on my recent trip to the States returning with several polishes I noticed that I have a thing for blues. I knew I had a thing for purples, but this was new!

Recently that trend has remained and the latest polishes I've been wearing and buying have been different shades of this lovely colour.

First up in Color Show's 'Lilac Rebel' from their Acid Wash collection.

I've just found a new Group on facebook called 'All Things Nails' and whilst I was searching for information on Color Show's Bleached Neon collection, someone posted a picture of one of these Acid Wash polishes. 

I'd never heard of them, or seen them in the stores, and it seemed like another limited collection had quickly passed me by. On further investigation it seems that these were still available in some places and after a visit to two Boots Stores I managed to pick up the above in a light blue and a minty green. They do four colours in this range, the others are a cream and a darker blue.

Overall I like the effect it gives, you don't have to fish for the white matt glitters and there are plenty of the larger hex ones. However the application was a bit tricky, the polish, although thick is quite sheer and it took three coats to get the polish fully opaque.

I will keep my eyes peeled for the other two polishes as both Superdrug and Boots seem to be doing offers on Color Show polishes, whether that's buy two get one free or buy one get second half price.

Whilst on the subject of Color Show, I watched Nicole from Young Wild and Polishes review on their Bleached Neons collection. She loves them and commented they were great for water marbling (something I have yet to successfully do!) Disappointingly the seven polishes they brought out in this range were not duplicated over here in the UK. Omitting three shades including the blue and purple that I was really hankering after! Why Maybelline, do you DO this?

The packaging is different too, here are the four available over here. Why didn't they swap out the orange for a blue to mix it up a bit?

And these are the larger and more interesting collection they released in the States.

So why do they do this? There is probably a very boring and unsatisfactory reason behind it, I wonder if any letter to Maybelline would unearth the reason, or make them consider making the whole range available over here... I think the nail market in the UK is big enough for Maybelline to consider this, let's see! 

So I did pick up the UK set. Bet I make a dogs dinner of trying to water marble, whether that's due to formula, the colours just being too similar or just my lack of skills!